"No; I shall go over to Arles this afternoon and post it there. As you know, it's scarcely an hour away by train." He glanced at his watch. "Past twelve o'clock already! Won't you stay and take lunch with me? Madame Giras is famous in Nîmes for her bouillabaisse."
She agreed readily, and a dainty lunch was soon served them in the covered arbour. Over the olives and bouillabaisse and the œufs provençals they chatted in easy, friendly fashion about impersonal matters—the strange charm of Provence, art, music, the theatre.
From that the conversation passed imperceptibly to more personal matters. Elaine, keeping to her resolve of the morning, led it in that direction. He learnt that she was an orphan; that her nearest relatives were entirely out of sympathy with her ideas and aspirations, and profoundly distasteful to her; that she took full pride in her independence and the position she was carving out for herself in the world of theatrical art.
"To be free; to be independent; to live your own life; to know that you buy your bread and bed with the money you've earned yourself—it's fine, it's splendid!" said Elaine, with flushed cheek. "I wonder if men ever have that feeling as strongly as we women do?"
"'To be free, sire, is only to change one's master,'" quoted Rivière.
"'Master' is a word I should rule out of the dictionary," she replied.
"And if ever your present freedom were suddenly denied to you by Fate?"
She shivered, and moved a little into the full blaze of the sunshine.
In the afternoon Rivière took train to Arles. The way lies by vineyards and olive orchards alternating with open, wind-swept heathland. The stunted olive trees, twisted and gnarled, pictured themselves to him as little old men worn and weary with their fight against the winds. Here the mistral was master and the olive trees his slaves.