"On the pleasant shore of the French Riviera, about half way between
Marseilles and the Italian border, stands a large, proud, rose-colored
hotel. Deferential palms cool its flushed facade, and before it stretches
a short dazzling beach. Lately it has become a summer resort of notable
and fashionable people; a decade ago it was almost deserted after its
English clientele went north in April. Now, many bungalows cluster
near it, but when this story begins only the cupolas of a dozen old villas
rotted like water lilies among the massed pines between Gausse's Hotel
des Etrangers and Cannes, five miles away."
"Along the walls on the village side all was dusty, the wriggling
vines, the lemon and eucalyptus trees, the casual wheel barrow,
left only a moment since, but already grown into the path,
atrophied and faintly rotten. Nicole was invariably somewhat
surprised that by turning in the other direction past a bed of
peonies she walked into an area so green and cool that the
leaves and petals were curled with tender damp."
"Following a walk marked by an intangible mist of bloom that
followed the white border stones she came to a space over-
looking the sea where there were lanterns asleep in the fig trees
and a big table and wicker chairs and a great market umbrella
from Sienna, all gathered about an enormous pine, the big-
est tree in the garden. She paused there looking absently at a
growth of nasturtiums and iris tangled at its foot, as though
sprung from a careless handful of seeds...she walked on, between
kaleidoscopic peonies massed in pink clouds, black and brown
tulips and fragile mauve-stemmed roses, transparent like
sugar flowers in a confectioner's window-until the scherzo of
color broke off suddenly in mid-air and moist steps went down
to a level five feet below."
