Having found the key to the mystery, she suddenly became so absent-minded as not to hear the question, "What do you see?" Then she began to warn Mrs. Allonby equally against the larger hotels and any in the Caravan Bay, and Ermengarde took the opportunity of finally refusing to drag her into the fag of hotel-hunting, and got into a tram going towards Caravan by herself. But when, a couple of hours later, she found herself leaning on the balustrade by the sea on the Promenade du Midi, very tired and hot, and unable to find any room in the crowded hotels just visited, she was partly annoyed and partly pleased to see the tall, slight figure of this woman of mystery coming towards her. "I never saw it more darkly and deeply blue," Agatha said, stopping and leaning at her side, "or the turquoise of the shoal water more clear and lovely." The soft boom of surf on the rocks was very lulling and sweet, and the scent of the pure, azure-shadowed spray that dashed from waves breaking in fine curves of every shade of blue, with never a tint of green, fresh and vivifying. Even the subdued menace of the ground-swell was mellow, not harsh with the scream of dragged shingle, as in paler, greyer seas. It was restful to look and look, to plunge and steep the sight in the intense glowing blue, and wonder if it could be true, a real sea rolling through this mid-earth, and not some incredible splendour of "faery lands forlorn." Even the wickedness and cruelty of Arthur took a softer complexion in the light of that warm and clear dark sea. Far out towards the horizon the velvety depth of blue made the sky white by comparison; but nearer it had a liquid quality, a sparkling sweetness that promised to assuage thirst and renew failing pulses as with some divine elixir. One might drink deep of that clear wave and lose all memory of pain and grief, or, like the waters of Eunoe, it might bring to mind all that is beautiful--lost joys, forgotten aspirations, divine desires, old sweet loves. But in a world of prose and fatigue tea was a more desirable, or at least a more attainable, elixir; for was not Rumpelmayer's hard by--Rumpelmayer's of the pure and perfumed China leaf and select company? Thither Ermengarde turned, and secured a table outside, with that broad purple splendour still in sight, and its salt freshness stealing through the palm-colonnade and rustling the feathery tops of the giant eucalyptus in the public gardens opposite; and thither, after some hesitation and consultation of her watch, the woman of mystery was persuaded to accompany her.