The sky was like an open furnace. Streets were empty. While sketching he had noticed a bathing-house, tethered against the bank below the bridge. He went there to get cool He tried the diving-boards; none of them were high enough. Presently he climbed on to the scorching roof and went off from there. People crossing the bridge stopped to watch him. Once as he was preparing to take the plunge, he saw the orange streak of the old bus creeping across the blue between the girders. He waited till it was just above him. It pulled up. The girl leant out and waved. After that, when he saw the orange streak approaching he waited until it had stopped above him.
The quiet of evening was falling when he again went in search of Desire. This time he was told she had gone out. He left word that he was going to the old Papal Garden, on the rock above the palace, to watch the sunset.
As he climbed the hundred steps of the Escalier de Sainte Anne, which wind round the face of the precipice, the romance of the view that opened out before him took away his breath. He felt injured and angry that she was not there to share it. He went over the details of the first day in Paris. It had been a fiasco; this day had been worse.
If ever he were to marry her—— For the first time he realized that winning her was not everything.
Near the top of the ascent, where a gateway spanned the path, he halted. A fig-tree leant across the wall, heavy with fruit that was green and purple. Behind him from a rock a spring rushed and gurgled. He stooped across the parapet, gazing down into the town. It wasn’t aloof like New York, nor sullen like London. It was a woman lifting her arms behind her head and laughing lazily through eyes half-shut.
Against the sweep of encircling distance, mountains lay blue and smoking. A faint pinkness spread across the country like a blush. White walls and hillsides were tinted to salmon-color. The sunset drained the red from the tiles of house-tops. Plane-trees, peeping above gray masonry, looked clear and deep as wells. The Rhone wound about the city walls like a gold and silver spell.
Now that coolness had come, shutters began to open. The murmur of innumerable sounds floated up. A breeze whispered through the valley like the voice of yearning. It seemed that behind those windows girls were preparing to meet their lovers. And the other women, the women who were too old or too cold to love! He thought of them.
Suddenly his eyes were covered from behind by two hands. He struggled to remove them; then he felt that they were slender and young.
“Who are you?”
Silence.