On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed facade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable and fashionable people; a decade ago il was almost deserted after its English clientele went north in April.
The hotel and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach were one. In the early morning the distant image of Cannes, the pink and cream of old fortifications, the purple Alp that bounded Italy, were cast across the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows.
Before eight a man came down to the beach in a blue bathrobe and with much preliminary application to his person of the chilly water, and much grunting and loud breathing, floundered a minute in the sea. When he had gone, beach and bay were quiet for an hour. Merchantmen crawled westward on the horizon; bus boys shouted in the hotel court; the dew dried upon the pines.
In another hour the horns ol motors began to blow down from the winding road along the low range of the Maures, which separates the littoral from true Provencal France. A mile from the sea, where pines give way to dusty poplars, is an isolated railroad stop, whence one June morning in a victoria brought a woman and her daughter down to Gausses Hotel. Her fine forehead sloped gently up to where her hair, bordering it like an armorial shield, burst into lovelocks and waves and curlicues of ash blonde and gold.
Her eyes were bright, big, clear, wet, and shining, the color of her cheecks was real, breaking close to the surface from the strong young pump of her heart. Her body hovered delicately on the last edge ol childhood-she was almost eighteen, nearly complete, but the dew was still on her. They both spoke cheerfully but were obviously without direction and bored by the factโmoreover, just any direction would not do.
