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a bright patchwork of beach colors.
    â€œWhen we came here first seven years ago,” she said, “you’d only have seen a few French nurses picnicking; it’s all happened in the last two years.”
    West of the Negresco a large new building was in construction. She looked at it pensively. “Heaven knows what this place will be like in a few years’ time. When you think of what Juan was six years ago, just sand and pines, running to the sea.”
    As they skirted Juan, she looked back over her shoulder at the Cap. “There’s something pretty terrible going up there, too, as far as I can see.”
    Along the edge of the gulf was the same patchwork effect of beach umbrellas. “If Napoleon could have foreseen this,” she said.
    â€œBut that was March, when he landed. I mean to say there may have been a winter season.”
    â€œI’d doubt it. Cannes was a village when Lord Brougham came here.”
    â€œIt’s hard to believe that now.”
    She nodded. They had turned the tip of the Croisette. Everything looked very solid and established, the proud curving esplanade, the palm trees and the shops and the hotels, the sleek, low, shining cars and the statue of Edward VII in his yachting cap, the bright colors on the beach, the bathing dresses and the umbrellas, the trim half-naked figures and the bronzed young men tossing medicine balls to one another, and the sun refracted from the tall white buildings. It all looked so very permanent, so in tune with itself.
    â€œIt’s only the ports that stay the same, Villefranche, and the old part of Nice and this.”
    She was driving past the Casino into the square beyond as she said that and indeed they seemed here to have come suddenly into another world, an older world, with yachts moored against a quay, and tables set in front of cafés under plane trees; with kiosks and horsedrawn cabs, with sailors in white caps loitering on the quayside, and on the far side thesilhouette of the old town climbing to the peak of its squat stone tower.
    â€œLet’s have a drink,” she said.
    â€œWhat about your dress?”
    â€œOh, that can wait.”
    In the shade of the Taverne des Allées were a number of vacant tables. In spite of the noise along the waterfront, the honking of horns, the shouting of fishermen and sailors, it all seemed very secluded here, beside the flower market beneath the plane trees. “Yes,” she said, “a vermouth cassis, and a cigarette.”
    She held the cigarette between her two first fingers, right against her knuckles, closing her fist on it, when she was not smoking. He had never seen a woman smoke that way. But it suited her. It was compact and practical.
    â€œTell me about yourself,” she said. “I don’t know anything about you except your painting.”
    He told her about his home; an old colonial house in the Connecticut valley. It had been his grandfather’s. His father had been a professor at Columbia. He had retired now but he did a certain amount of lecturing still and editorial work for a firm of publishers.
    â€œDo you live with your parents then?”
    â€œTo a certain extent. But I’ve a studio in New York.”
    â€œYou sound quite rich.”
    He shook his head. “I’ve enough to keep myself from starving, but I shan’t have much of a life unless I make a success of painting.”
    â€œThat’s fine; that sounds exciting, that’s something I’ve never known, the start of a career, the first successes. I’m Henry’s second wife you know. He’s a lot older than me. He was an ambassador when I met him.” She paused. “That’s something that I’ve always missed being young with someone, working up with someone, being a part of their success.”
    She spoke slowly, almost wistfully, but she was still wearing her sunglasses. He could not read the expression in her eyes. “Tell