Thus I declaimed to myself in my heart, under the influence of the seductive temptations of that intoxicating atmosphere.

‘Come down,’ said a voice firmly and quietly underneath me in the orange-trees of the garden.

I started violently.  It was Frank’s voice.  He was standing in the garden, his legs apart, and a broad, flat straw hat, which I did not admire, on his head.  His pale face was puckered round about the eyes as he looked up at me, like the face of a person trying to look directly at the sun.

‘Why,’ I exclaimed foolishly, glancing down over the edge of the balcony, and shutting my white parasol with a nervous, hurried movement, ‘have—­have you come here?’

He had disobeyed my wish.  He had not left Mentone at once.

‘Come down,’ he repeated persuasively, and yet commandingly.

I could feel my heart beating against the marble parapet of the balcony.  I seemed to be caught, to be trapped.  I could not argue with him in that position.  I could not leave him shouting in the garden.  So I nodded to pacify him, and disappeared quickly from the balcony, almost scurrying away.  And in the comparative twilight of my room I stopped and gave a glance in the mirror, and patted my hair, and fearfully examined the woman that I saw in the glass, as if to discern what sort of woman she truly was, and what was the root of her character.  I hesitated and snatched up my gloves.  I wanted to collect my thoughts, and I could not.  It was impossible to think clearly.  I moved in the room, dazed.  I stood by the tumbled bed, fingering the mosquito curtains.  They might have been a veil behind which was obscured the magic word of enlightenment I needed.  I opened the door, shut it suddenly, and held the knob tight, defying an imagined enemy outside.  ‘Oh!’ I muttered at last, angry with myself, ’what is the use of all this?  You know you must go down to him.  He’s waiting for you.  Show a little common-sense and go without so much fuss.’  And so I descended the stairs swiftly and guiltily, relieved that no one happened to see me.  In any case, I decided, nothing could induce me to yield to him after my letter and after what had passed in the train.  The affair was beyond argument.  I felt that I could not yield, and that though it meant the ruin of happiness by obstinacy, I could not yield.  I shrank from yielding in that moment as men shrink from public repentance.

He had not moved from his post in the garden.  We shook hands.  A band of Italian musicians wandered into the garden and began to sing Verdi to a vigorous thrumming of guitars.  They sang as only Italians can sing—­as naturally as they breathed, and with a rich and overflowing innocent joy in the art which Nature had taught them.  They sang loudly, swingingly, glancing full of naive hope up at the windows of the vast, unresponsive hotel.

‘So you are still in Mentone,’ I ventured.

‘Yes,’ he said.  ‘Come for a walk.’