The horses drew up and the carriage came to a standstill. Mistral raised her head. She was aware without looking out of the window that they were back at the Hôtel de Paris.

She wanted to cry out that this moment must not end, that they must drive on, that she could not leave Sir Robert, but even as the night porter came hurrying from the hotel, he said quickly,

‘I will see you tomorrow. There are many things I want to say to you, my darling, but I am not free to say them yet. You must trust me a few more hours.’

She could not answer him. There were no words in which she could reply. She could only look into his eyes for a long breathless moment. She knew then that they belonged to each other for all time. That strange magnetism which she had known first when they had met by the sea shore joined them once again.

She felt as if he drew her irresistibly and possessively into his keeping. She surrendered herself to his will, knew herself captured and conquered and gloried in the ecstasy of it.

The door of the carriage was opened. Mistral felt as if she was rudely dragged back to earth from the radiant sunlit Paradise. Her shyness returned and her eyes were veiled.

Sir Robert got out and handed her out of the carriage. She did not look at him as they walked up the steps to the door of the hotel, then she felt his lips, warm and insistent, against her fingers.

‘Until tomorrow, my beloved,’ he said softly and was gone.

13

Sir Robert watched the first pale flush of the dawn light the sky and then spread, growing golden and yet more golden every moment, until the whole vista of sea, sky and land was ablaze with brilliant colour. As he watched, he thought, as he had done often before, that it all had a sense of unreality about it. It was both as beautiful and as ephemeral as a dream.

That, he thought suddenly, was the right way to look at Monte Carlo. It was a dream world one could enter for a little while and accept as lightly and as unselfconsciously as one accepted the dreams which pass in the night. It was a place made for enjoyment, for excitement and often for happiness, but it was never meant to be lived in or to be a foundation on which one could build a real life or the future.

It had a loveliness almost beyond description, he thought, as he watched the sea turn to vivid blue with streaks of emerald and then pale where it met the horizon to amethyst tinged with silver. But he knew that for him personally, while he could acknowledge the beauty of Monte Carlo, his heart would always find perfection not on the

Côte d’Azur but at Cheveron.