Douane, even Mrs. Dollond’s frivolity was changed into silent admiration of the savage beauty of the gorge.  They stood for a while leaning upon the desolate bridge, turning reluctantly from the great beetling rocks of the ravine above to gaze with strange qualms into the yawning precipice beneath.  Rainham pointed out the little thread of white which was the one dangerous pathway down the gorge, confessing his sympathy with the fatal fascination with which it had filled so many—­he mentioned the name of a young Englishman staying at Mentone the year before amongst the number—­at the ultimate cost of their lives.

“Horrible!” exclaimed Mrs. Dollond, retreating to the carriage, which awaited them on the French side of the bridge.  “I shall dream of it to-night.”

“I have dreamt of it,” said Rainham simply.  “When I was a boy I used to dream of climbing to the edge of the world and falling over.  Nowadays, I dream of dropping over the Pont St. Louis:  the sensation is much the same.”

“A very disagreeable one, I should think,” said Mrs. Dollond, settling herself in her wraps with a little shudder.

“No,” said Rainham, with a smile.  “I think, Mrs. Dollond, it was rather nice:  it was the waking up which was disagreeable.”

They made their breakfast—­a very late one—­at Mentone, and dawdled over it, Mr. Dollond having disappeared at the last moment, and been found, after a lengthy search, sketching, in serene disregard of the inappropriateness of the occasion, a doorway in St. Michele.

When at last they drove into the principality, the evening was well advanced.  Even the irrepressible Mrs. Dollond was not to be enticed by the brilliant windows of the Casino from the sofa upon which she had stretched herself luxuriously, when their extensive dinner was at an end; and Rainham with a clear conscience could betake himself immediately to bed.  But, in spite of his fatigue, he lay for a long time awake; the music of the concert-room, the strains of M. Oudshorn’s skilful orchestra, floated in through the half-closed persiennes of his room, and later mingled with his dreams, tinging them, perhaps, with some of that indefinable plaintiveness, a sort of sadness essentially ironical, with which all dance music, even the most extravagant, is deeply pervaded.

A week later, as from the window of the receding Italian train he caught a last glimpse of the Dollonds on the crowded platform, he waved a polite farewell to them with a sensible relief.  It was a week in which Mrs. Dollond had been greatly on his hands, for her husband had made no secret of the willingness with which he had accepted Rainham’s escort for the indefatigable lady amongst the miscellaneous company of the tables, leaving him free to study the picturesque in the less heated atmosphere which he preferred.  And a week of Mrs. Dollond, as Rainham was obliged to confess, was not good for any man to undergo.