her fingers in tender caress.

The air was keen and yet strangely soft; to Rivière it was wine of life.
He drew it in thirstily; let the wind of the train blow his hair as it
listed; watched greedily the ever-changing landscape. The strange bare
beauty of this land of sunshine and romance brought him a keen thrill of
happiness.

It was as though he had loosed himself from prison chains and had
emerged into a new life of freedom.

In full morning they reached Arles, the old Roman city in the delta of
the Rhone. It clusters, huddles around the stately Roman arena on the
hill in the centre of the town--a place of narrow, tortuous _ruelles_
where every stone cries out a message from the past. In the lanes, going
about the business of the day, were women and girls moulded in the
strange dark beauty of the district--the "belles Arlésiennes" famous in
prose and verse.

Yet chiefly it was the arena that fascinated him. All through the
afternoon he wandered about the great stone tiers, flooded in sunlight,
and reconstructed for himself a picture of the days when gladiators down
below had striven with one another for success--or death. The arena was
the archetype of civilized life.

Now he was a spectator, one of the multitude who look on. It was good to
sit in the flooding sunlight and know that he was no longer a gladiator
in the arena. There was higher work for him to do, away from the
merciless stabbing sword and the cunning of net and trident.