“Isn’t it a heavenly day?” said the girl, “what a pity to have to go and spend hours in those stuffy ‘Rooms’!”
“Must you go over to ‘Monte’?” he said; “we might have gone a walk.”
Jocelyn plucked a spray of the yellow mimosa, and held it up to see if it would go with the roses.
“Yes,” she said, “it’s such a pity; but Auntie’s dying to go, and she won’t go alone. The poor dear’s got a new ‘system.’ She’s been studying it all the morning, she doesn’t understand it in the least, but that doesn’t matter, you know, she always gives it up when it comes to the point. Are you coming over with us? Mr. Nielsen said he’d meet us in the Gardens.” Giles bit his lips.
“Yes, I think so,” he said.
Jocelyn took a long sniff of the roses, and walked up to the terrace wall. She stood there with her back to him, looking down on the white houses and the ill-kept gardens, where plants straggled, and coloured garments hung limply from lines. Presently, without turning her head, she put her hand on Giles’s arm, and plucked his sleeve, saying—
“Look! What a wilderness! I believe I love even the untidiness of it; there’s colour in it, anyway.” Giles quivered when she touched him; he came close to her, and looked over her shoulder at the confused jumble of painted buildings, green foliage, and gay rags, with the blue sea shining beyond. With a thrill of delight he felt the touch of her shoulder against his arm.
“What a child it is for colour!” he said; “do you care so very much for the South?”
“I love it,” she said, with a little sigh. She twisted her fingers in and out of each other in a way she had when she was thinking. “The only thing I don’t care about are the people. I don’t mean the natives, I don’t know them, I mean hotel people; all the years I’ve been abroad, they’re always the same, wherever one goes. This place is almost worse than any, because of Monte Carlo.”
“Do you include me?” said Giles. She gave his coat sleeve a little friendly pull.