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BOOK 1

I

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 façade, and before it stretches a short dazzling beach Lately it has become a suo it was allish clientele went north in April Now, ins only the cupolas of a dozen old villas rotted like water lilies aers and Cannes, five miles away

The hotel and its bright tan prayer rug of a beach were one In the early e of Cannes, the pink and cream of old fortifications, the purple Alp that bounded Italy, were cast across the water and lay quavering in the ripples and rings sent up by sea-plants through the clear shallows Before eight a man came down to the beach in a blue bathrobe and with much preliminary application to his person of the chilly water, and , floundered a one, beach and bay were quiet for an hour Merchantmen craard on the horizon; bus boys shouted in the hotel court; the dew dried upon the pines In another hour the horns ofthe low range of the Maures, which separates the littoral from true Provençal France

A ive way to dusty poplars, is an isolated railroad stop, whence one June hter down to Gausse’s Hotel Theprettiness that would soon be patted with broken veins; her expression was both tranquil and aware in a pleasant way However, one’s eye ic in her pink pal flush of children after their cold baths in the evening Her fine forehead sloped gently up to where her hair, bordering it like an armorial shield, burst into lovelocks and waves and curlicues of ash blonde and gold Her eyes were bright, big, clear, wet, and shining, the color of her cheeks was real, breaking close to the surface fro pue of childhood—she was alhteen, nearly complete, but the deas still on her

As sea and sky appeared below them in a thin, hot line the mother said:

“So to like this place”

“I want to go hoirl answered

They both spoke cheerfully but were obviously without direction and bored by the fact—h excite jaded nerves but with the avidity of prize-winning schoolchildren who deserved their vacations

“We’ll stay three days and then go hoht away for steamer tickets”

At the hotel the girl made the reservation in idio reround floor she walked into the glare of the French s and out a few steps onto the stone veranda that ran the length of the hotel When she walked she carried herself like a ballet- dancer, not slumped down on her hips but held up in the sht clipped close her shadow and she retreated—it was too bright to see Fifty yards away the Mediterranean yielded up its pigments, moment by moment, to the brutal sunshine; below the balustrade a faded Buick cooked on the hotel drive

Indeed, of all the region only the beach stirred with activity Three British nannies sat knitting the slow pattern of Victorian England, the pattern of the forties, the sixties, and the eighties, into sweaters and socks, to the tune of gossip as formalized as incantation; closer to the sea a dozen persons kept house under striped umbrellas, while their dozen children pursued uninti with cocoanut oil out in the sun

As Rosemary came onto the beach a boy of twelve ran past her and dashed into the sea with exultant cries Feeling the ie faces, she took off her bathrobe and followed She floated face down for a few yards and finding it shallow staggered to her feet and plodded forward, dragging sliainst the resistance of the water When it was about breast high, she glanced back toward shore: a bald hts, his tufted chest thrown out, his brash navel sucked in, was regarding her attentively As Roseed theamid the facetious whiskers of his chest, and poured hi from a bottle in his hand

Rosemary laid her face on the water and swam a choppy little four- beat crawl out to the raft The water reached up for her, pulled her down tenderly out of the heat, seeped in her hair and ran into the corners of her body She turned round and round in it, e the raft she was out of breath, but a tanned woman with very white teeth looked down at her, and Rosemary, suddenly conscious of the rahiteness of her own body, turned on her back and drifted toward shore The hairythe bottle spoke to her as she came out

“I say—they have sharks out behind the raft” He was of indeterlish with a slow Oxford drawl “Yesterday they devoured two British sailors from the flotte at Golfe Juan”

“Heavens!” exclaimed Rosemary

“They come in for the refuse from the flotte”

Glazing his eyes to indicate that he had only spoken in order to warn her, he minced off two steps and poured himself another drink

Not unpleasantly self-conscious, since there had been a slight sway of attention toward her during this conversation, Rosemary looked for a place to sit Obviously each family possessed the strip of sand immediately in front of its u back and forth—the atmosphere of a community upon which it would be presumptuous to intrude Farther up, where the beach was streith pebbles and dead sea-weed, sat a group with flesh as white as her own They lay under small hand-parasols instead of beach uenous to the place Between the dark people and the light, Rosenoir on the sand

Lying so, she first heard their voices and felt their feet skirt her body and their shapes pass between the sun and herself The breath of an inquisitive dog blear a little in the heat and hear the s waves Presently her ear distinguished individual voices and she becauy” had kidnapped a waiter froht in order to saw him in two The sponsor of the story was a white-haired wo dress, obviously a relic of the previous evening, for a tiara still clung to her head and a discouraged orchid expired froue antipathy to her and her companions, turned away