At intervals during the afternoon a few tourists--mostly
Americans--rushed up in high-powered, panting cars to the gateway of the
arena; gave a hurried ten minutes to the interior; and then whirled away
across the white roads of the Rhone delta in a scurry of dust.

Only one visitor seemed to realize, like himself, the glamour of the
past and to steep the mind in it. This was a woman. Her age was perhaps
twenty-five, in her bearing was that subtle, scarcely definable,
sureness of self which marks off womanhood from girlhood. She climbed
from tier to tier of the amphitheatre with firm confident step; stood
gazing down on her dream pictures of the scene in the arena; moved on to
a fresh vantage-point. She wore a short tailored skirt which ignored the
ugly, skin-tight convention of the current fashion. Her cheeks were
fresh with a healthy English colour; her eyes were deep blue, toning
almost to violet; her hair was burnished chestnut under the soft felt
hat curled upwards in front; a faint odour of healthy womanhood formed
as it were an aura around her.

All this John Rivière had noticed subconsciously as she passed close by
him on the ledge where he sat, walking with her firm, confident step.
Though he noted it appreciatively, yet it disturbed him. He did not want
to notice any woman. He had big work to do, and on that he wanted to
concentrate all his faculties. He had had no thought of a woman in his
life when he broke the chains that shackled him to the Clifford Matheson
existence. He purposed to have no call of sex to divert him from the
realization of his big idea.

Presently she had climbed to the topmost ledge of the amphitheatre, and
stood out against the sky-line of the sunset-to-be, deep-chested,
straight, clean-limbed, a very perfect figure of a modern Diana.