"Let's go outside," she answered, "and look at the view."
"Why hurry?" complained her husband. "It's so cool and comfortable in here."
"There must be a breeze on the terrace. There must always be a breeze out there."
"Well, run along. I'll follow in a few minutes. I want a rest."
Muriel's lips tightened.
"Very well," she said.
She went out to the walled walk that surrounds the church and strolled to the side overlooking the bay.
Far below her, shimmering in the heat, stretched the city, like a panting dog at rest. To the right, across the forest of minor shipping in the vieux port, to the rue Clary and the Gare Maritime, the massed houses of the Old Town stood grim and grey. Directly before her, from the foot of the wall and for miles to the left, across the Cité Chabas and the Quartier St. Lambert, to Roucas-Blanc and beyond to Rond Point, where the Prado meets the sea, the hills fell away to the water in terraces of cypress and olive trees and pomegranates in blossom. From dark green to white the foliage waved in a pleasant breeze. The villas on the slopes shone pink in the sun. The sky was of a most intense blue; the lapping waves of the bay mirrored the sky, and in the midst of the waves, among its rocky sister islands, rose the castellated strip of land where towers the Château d'If.
She leaned upon the parapet and looked out to the distant horizon. The breeze rose and rumpled those strands of her dark hair that had fallen below her wide hat. She was thinking of another landscape—of a landscape of which she had only heard:
"The silent chapel; the long, fertile plateau that seems a world away; the snow-capped mountains to the northward; the faint tinkle of the distant sheep-bells, and the memory of her that sinned and repented and was saved."