climbing. We saw a row of narrow,
slattern cottages, their backs over the sea, and in front of them marched
to and fro a magnificent soldier laced in gold, with chinking spurs and a
rifle. Suddenly there ran out of a cottage two little girls, aged about
four years and eight years, dirty, unkempt, delicious, shrill, their
movements full of the ravishing grace of infancy. They attacked the laced
soldier, chattering furiously, grumbling at him, intimidating him with
the charming gestures of spoilt and pouting children. And he bent down
stiffly in his superb uniform, and managed his long, heavy gun, and
talked to them in a deep, vibrating voice. He reasoned with them till we
could hear him no more. It was so touching, so exquisitely human!

We reached the top of the hill, having passed the Italian customs,
equally vile with the French. The terraced grounds of an immense deserted
castle came down to the roadside; and over the wall, escaped from the
garden, there bloomed extravagantly a tangle of luscious yellow roses,
just out of our reach. The road was still and deserted. We could see
nothing but the road and the sea and the hills, all steeped, bewitched,
and glorious under the sun. The ship had nearly slid to Mentone. The
curving coastline of Italy wavered away into the shimmering horizon. And
there were those huge roses, insolently blooming in the middle of winter,
the symbol of the terrific forces of nature which slept quiescent under
the universal calm. Perched as it were in a niche of the hills, we were
part of that tremendous and ennobling scene. Long since the awkward
self-consciousness caused by our plight had left us. We did not use
speech, but we knew that we thought alike, and were suffering the same
transcendent emotion. Was it joy or sadness? Rather than either, it was
an admixture of both, originating in a poignant sense of the grandeur of
life and of the earth.

'Oh, Frank,' I murmured, my spirit bursting, 'how beautiful it is!'

Our eyes met. He took me and kissed me impetuously, as though my
utterance had broken a spell which enchained him. And as I kissed him I
wept, blissfully. Nature had triumphed.

VI

We departed from Mentone that same day after lunch. I could not remove to
his hotel; he could not remove to mine, for this was Mentone. We went to
Monte Carlo by road, our luggage following. We chose Monte Carlo partly
because it was the nearest place, and partly because it has some of the
q