owards it along the palm-flanked promenade, in the gay
morning light, with the tideless sea on the other hand lapping the rough
beach beyond the lines of the railroad which borders it. On his way he
met files of the beautiful Ligurian women, moving straight under the
burdens balanced on their heads, or bestriding the donkeys laden with
wine-casks in the roadway, or following beside the carts which the
donkeys drew. Ladies of all nations, in the summer fashions of London,
Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, and New York thronged the path. The sky
was of a blue so deep, so liquid that it seemed to him he could scoop it
in his hand and pour it out again like water. Seaward, he glanced at the
fishing-boats lying motionless in the offing, and the coastwise steamer
that runs between Nice and Genoa trailing a thin plume of smoke between
him and their white sails. With the more definite purpose of making sure
of the Grand Hotel Sardegna, he scanned the different villa slopes that
showed their level lines of white and yellow and dull pink through the
gray tropical greenery on the different levels of the hills. He was duly
rewarded by the sight of the bold legend topping its cornice, and when
he let his eye descend the garden to a little pavilion on the wall
overlooking the road, he saw his acquaintances of the evening before
making a belated breakfast. The father recognized Lanfear first and
spoke to his daughter, who looked up from her coffee and down towards
him where he wavered, lifting his hat, and bowed smiling to him. He had
no reason to cross the roadway towards the white stairway which climbed
from it to the hotel grounds, but he did so. The father leaned out over
the wall, and called down to him: "Won't you come up and join us,
doctor?"

"Why, yes!" Lanfear consented, and in another moment he was shaking
hands with the girl, to whom, he noticed, her father named him again. He
had in his glad sense of her white morning dress and her hat of
green-leafed lace, a feeling that she was somehow meeting him as a
friend of indefinite date in an intimacy unconditioned by any past or
future time. Her pleasure in his being there was as frank as her
father's, and there was a pretty trust of him in every word and tone
which forbade misinterpretation.

"I was just talking about you, doctor," the father began, "and saying
what a pity you hadn't come to our hotel. It's a capital place."

"_I've_ been thinking it was a pity I went to mine,"