The brown fingers of the peasant women are tying and pressing all the miraculous bloom of the earth into the fair fingers of Saxon girls—­great packages of roses, pink lilies, clematis, stephanotis, and honeysuckle.  A gentle breeze is blowing, rocking the umbrellas, wafting the odour of the roses and honeysuckle, bringing hither an odour of the lapping tide, rocking the immense umbrellas.  One huge and ungainly sunshade creaks, swaying its preposterous rotundity.  Beneath it the brown woman slices her pumpkin.  Mike scanned every thin face for Lily, and as he stood wedged against a flower-stand, a girl passed him.  She turned.  It was Lily.

“Lily, is it possible?  I was looking for you everywhere.”

“Looking for me!  When did you arrive in Nice?  How did you know I was here?”

“Mrs. Byril wrote.  She described a girl, and I knew from her description it must be you.  And I came on at once.”

“You came on at once to find me?”

“Yes; I love you more than ever.  I can think only of you....  But when I arrived I found Mrs. Byril had left, and I had no means of finding your address.”

“You foolish boy; you mean to say you rushed away on the chance that I was the girl described in Mrs. Byril’s letter! ...  A thousand miles! and never even waited to ask the name or the address!  Well, I suppose I must believe that you are in love.  But you have not heard....  They say I’m dying.  I have only one lung left.  Do you think I’m looking very ill?”

“You are looking more lovely than ever.  My love shall give you health; we shall go—­where shall we go?  To Italy?  You are my Italy.  But I’m forgetting—­why did you not answer my letter?  It was cruel of you.  Deceive me no more, play with me no longer; if you will not have me, say so, and I will end myself, for I cannot live without you.”

“But I do not understand, I haven’t had any letter; what letter?”

“I wrote asking you to marry me.”

They walked out of the flower market on to the Promenade des Anglais, and Mike told her about his letters, concealing nothing of his struggle.  The sea lay quite blue and still, lapping gently on the spare beach; the horizon floated on the sea, almost submerged, and the mountains, every edge razor-like, hard, and metallic, were veiled in a deep, transparent blue; and the villas, painted white, pink and green, with open loggias and balconies, completed the operatic aspect.

“My mother will not hear of it; she would sooner see me dead than married to you.”

“Why?”

“She knows you are an atheist for one thing.”

“But she does not know that I have six thousand a year.”

“Six thousand a year! and who was the fairy that threw such fortune into your lap?  I thought you had nothing.”

Vanity took him by the throat, but he wrenched himself free, and answered evasively that a distant cousin had left him a large sum of money, including an estate in Berkshire.