Dodo was ready to go. She bade her
companion goodbye, and good luck in Florence. "Too bad you're not
getting out here!" she said, as they shook hands. And then Mary forgot
her in gazing at the Rock of Hercules, the red rock crowned with walls
as old as history, and jewelled with flowers. Close to shore the water
was green and clear as beryl, and iridescent blue as a peacock's breast
where the sea flowed past the breakwater. In the harbour were yachts
large and small, a trading ship or two, and fishing boats drawn up on a
narrow strip of beach. Across from the Rock, and joined to it by the
low-lying Condamine, was Monte Carlo, with the white Casino towers
pointing high above roofs and feathery banks of trees, like the horns of
a great animal crouched basking in the gay sunlight.
Mary remembered how Peter had told her the tale of Hercules landing
here: how he had come in a small boat, and claimed the rock and the
lovely semi-circle of coast for his own. "The guests of Hercules, going
to pay him a visit," she said to herself now, as passengers began to
push their way along the corridor, in order to be the first ones down.
The girl's heart began suddenly to beat very fast, she did not know why.
"What is there to be excited about?" she asked herself. No answer came.
Yet the fact remained. She was intensely excited.
"If I were getting out, like all these other people," she thought,
"there'd be an excuse. But as it is----"
Then, far down within herself, a tiny voice said: "Why shouldn't you get
out--now, quickly, while there's time?"
It was a voice which seemed quite separate from herself, and she could
feel it as if her body were a cage in which a tiny bird sang a small
song in a sweet voice that must be listened to intently.
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