It is a dangerous place on which to stand, that topmost ledge of the
amphitheatre, with no parapet and a sheer drop to the street below.
Almost against his will, Rivière mounted there.

But there was no occasion for his help, and they two stood there, some
yards apart, silent, watching the red ball of the sun sink down into the
limitless flats of the Camargue, and the grey mist rising from the
marshes to wrap its ghostly fingers round this city of the ghostly past.

Twice she looked towards him as though she must speak out the thoughts
conjured up by this splendid scene. It wanted only some tiny excuse of
convention to bridge over the silence between them, but Rivière on his
side would not seek it, and the woman hesitated to ask him to take up
the thread that lay waiting to his hand.

A cold wind sprang up, and she descended and made her way to her hotel
on the Place du Forum.

At dinner in the deserted dining-room of his hotel, Rivière found
himself seated at the next table to her. There are only two hotels
worthy of the name in Arles, and the coincidence of meeting again was of
the very slightest. Yet somehow he felt subconsciously that the arm of
Fate was bringing their two lives together, and he resented it.

The silence between them remained unbroken.

In the evening he wrapped himself in a cloak against the bitter wind
rushing down the valley of the Rhone and spreading itself as an
invisible fan across the delta, and wandered about the dark alleys of