sitting under the
shade of trees by the tumbling blue Rhone, they settled with a polite
agent to take a small house near Chatillon.

Hither a piano followed them, and here for seven weeks they lived, each
one lost in sun-dyed dreams.

"I knew we should like this," Michael said to Stella, as they leaned
against tubs of rosy oleanders on a lizard-streaked wall, and watched
some great white oxen go smoothly by. "I like this heart of France
better than Brittany or Normandy. But I hope mother won't be bored
here."

"There are plenty of books," said Stella. "And anyway she wants to lie
back and think, and it's impossible to think except in the sun."

The oxen were still in sight along the road that wound upwards to where
Chatillon clustered red upon its rounded hill.

"It doesn't look like a real town," said Michael. "It's really not
different from the red sunbaked earth all about here. I feel it would be
almost a pity ever to walk up that road and find it is a town. I vote we
never go quite close, but just sit here and watch it changing colour all
through the day. I never want to move out of this garden."

"I can't walk about much," said Stella. "Because I simply must practise
and practise and practise and practise."

They always woke up early in the morning, and Michael used to watch
Chatillon purple-bloomed with the shadow of the fled night, then hazy
crimson for a few minutes until the sun came high enough to give it back
the rich burnt reds of the day. All through the morning Michael used to
sit among the peach trees of the garden, while Stella played. All
through the morning he used to read novel after novel of ephemeral fame
that here on the undisturbed shelves had acquired a certain permanence.
In the afternoon Stella and he used to wander through the vineyards down
to a shallow brown stream bordered by poplars and acacias, or in
sun-steeped oak woods idly chase the long lizards splendid with their
black and yellow lozenges and shimmering green mail.

Once in a village at harvest-time, when the market-place was a fathom
deep in golden corn, they helped in the threshing, and once when the
grain had been stored, they danced here with joyful country-folk under
the moon.

During tea-time they would sit with their mother beneath an almond tree,
while beyond in sunlit air vibrant with the glad cicadas butterflies
wantoned with the oleanders, or upon the wall preened their slow fans.
Later, they would pace a walk