The porch and cloisters of St. Trophime’s were too perfectly beautiful to be marred by a mood; but my brother Jack’s mysteriously wicked sweetheart would keep coming in between me and the wonderful carvings in the most disturbing way.  Some women never know when they are wanted!  But I did my best to make Mr. Dane forget her by taking an intelligent interest in everything, especially the things he cared for most, though once, in an absent-minded instant, I did unfortunately say:  “I don’t admire that type of girl,” when we were talking about a sculptured saint; and although he looked surprised I thought it too complicated to try and explain.

The afternoon light was burnishing the ancient stone carvings to copper when we left the cloisters of St. Trophime, took one last look at the porch, and turned toward the amphitheatre.  We were right to have waited, for the vast circle was golden in the sunset, like a heavy bracelet, dropped by Atlas one day, when he stretched a weary arm; and the beautiful fragments of coloured marbles, which the Greeks loved and Christians destroyed, were the jewels of that great bracelet.  The place was so pathetically beautiful in the dying day that a soft sadness pressed upon me like a hand on my forehead, and echoes of the long-dead past, when Greek Arles was a harbour of commerce by sea and river, or when it was Roman Arelate, rich and cruel, rang in my ears as we wandered through the cells of prisoners, the dens of lions, and the rooms of gladiators, where the young “men about town” used to pat their favourites on oiled backs, or make their bets on ivory tablets.

“If we were here by moonlight, we should see ghosts,” I said.  “Come, let us go before it grows any darker or sadder.  The shadows seem to move.  I think there’s a lion crouching in that black corner.”

“He won’t hurt you, sister Una,” said my brother Jack.  “There’s one thing you must see here before I take you home—­back to the hotel, I mean; and that is the Saracen Tower, as they call it.”

So we went into the Saracen Tower, and high up on the wall I saw the presentment of a hand.

“That is the Hand of Fatima,” explained the guide, who had been following rather than conducting us, because the chauffeur knew almost as much about the amphitheatre as he did.  “You should touch it, mademoiselle, for luck.  All the young ladies like to do that here; and the young men also, for that matter.”

Instantly my brother lifted me up, so that I might touch the hand; and then I would not be content unless he touched it too.

I had dinner in the couriers’ room that evening, with my brother, when I had dressed Lady Turnour for hers.  We were rather late, and had the room to ourselves, for the crowd which had collected there at luncheon time had vanished by train or motor.  There was a nice old waiter, who was frankly interested in us, recognizing perhaps that, as a maid and chauffeur, we were out of the beaten track.  He wanted to know if we had done any sight-seeing in Arles, and seemed to take it as a personal compliment that we had.