Presently Hugh succeeded in getting Dorise alone.
“It’s awfully stuffy here,” he said. “Let’s go outside—eh?”
Together they descended the red-carpeted steps and out into the palm-lined Place, at that hour thronged by the smartest crowd in Europe. Indeed, the war seemed to have led to increased extravagance and daring in the dress of those gay Parisiennes, those butterflies of fashion who were everywhere along the Cote d’Azur.
They turned the corner by the Palais des Beaux Arts into the Boulevard Peirara.
“Let’s walk out of the town,” he suggested to the girl. “I’m tired of the place.”
“So am I, Hugh,” Dorise admitted. “For the first fortnight the unceasing round of gaiety and the novelty of the Rooms are most fascinating, but, after that, one seems cooped up in an atmosphere of vicious unreality. One longs for the open air and open country after this enervating, exotic life.”
So when they arrived at the little church of Ste. Devote, the patron saint of Monaco, that little building which everyone knows standing at the entrance to that deep gorge the Vallon des Gaumates, they descended the steep, narrow path which runs beside the mountain torrent and were soon alone in the beautiful little valley where the grey-green olives overhang the rippling stream. The little valley was delightfully quiet and rural after the garish scenes in Monte Carlo, the cosmopolitan chatter, and the vulgar display of the war-rich. The old habitue of pre-war days lifts his hands as he watches the post-war life around the Casino and listens to the loud uneducated chatter of the profiteer’s womenfolk.
As the pair went along in the welcome shadows, for the sun fell strong upon the tumbling stream, Hugh was remarking upon it.
He had been at Monte Carlo with his father before the war, and realized the change.
“I only wish mother would move on,” Dorise exclaimed as they strolled slowly together.