his care,
feeling the comfort of perfect ease in his companionship. She could talk
to him if she chose, or be silent. Whatever she liked, he too would
like.

Half an hour later the taxi which Hannaford had hired stopped at the
bridge dedicated to the Empress of Austria, the bridge which marks the
dividing line between the communes of Roquebrune and Mentone. Then the
two walked along the sea front, where the spray spouted gold in the sun,
and a salt tang was on the breeze. It was a different world, somehow,
from the world of Monte Carlo, though it was made up of pleasure-seekers
from many countries. There were smartly dressed women, pretty girls with
tennis rackets, men in flannels, with Panama hats pulled over their
tanned faces; men with fine, clear profiles, who had been soldiers;
solemn judges on holiday; fat old couples who waddled from side to side,
as if their legs were set on at the corners, like the legs of chairs and
tables; thin, middle-aged ladies with long, flat feet which showed under
short tweed skirts; ladies clothed as unalluringly as possible as if to
apologize for belonging to the female sex; elderly gentlemen with
superior, selfish expressions, and faces like ten thousand other elderly
gentlemen who live in _pensions_, talk of their "well-connected"
friends, and collect all the newspapers to brood over in corners, as
dogs collect bones. There were invalids, too, in bath-chairs, and
children playing with huge St. Bernards or Great Danes, and charming
actresses from the Mentone Casino, with incredibly slim figures, immense
ermine muffs, and miniature Japanese spaniels. Mary could see no reason
why these people who promenaded and listened to the music should be
different both individually and in mass from a crowd to be seen at Monte
Carlo, yet the fact remained that they were different; and among the
faces there were none she knew, save those of the bird-like girl and her
mother, half forgotten since the meeting in the train.

Hannaford took her by the Port, and past the old town whose heights
towered picturesquely up and up, roof after roof, above the queer shops
and pink and yellow houses of the sea level. Then came the East Bay,
with its new villas and hotels, and background of hills silvered with
olives; and at last, by a turn to the right which avoided the high road
to Italy, they dipped into a rough path past a pebble floored stream,
where pretty kneeling girls sang and scrubbed clothing on the s