He dashed them away, at last, with a passionate gesture. "It can't be! It can't be!" he cried aloud, as many another man has cried in the righteous rebellion of his heart against the ironical decrees of the high gods whom his simple nature has never suspected of their eternal and inscrutable irony. CHAPTER XV If you travel on the highroad which skirts the cliff-bound coast of Normandy you may come to a board bearing the legend "Hottetôt-sur-Mer" and a hand pointing down a narrow gorge. If you follow the direction and descend for half a mile you come to a couple of villas, a humble café, some fishermen's cottages, one of which is also a general shop and a _débit de tabac_, a view of a triangle of sea, and eventually to a patch of shingly beach between two great bastions of cliffs. The beach itself contains a diminutive jetty, a tiny fleet of fishing smacks, some nets, three bathing machines joined together by ropes on which hang a few towels and bathing costumes, a dog, a child or so with spade and bucket, two English maiden ladies writing picture post-cards, a Frenchman in black, reading a Rouen newspaper under a gray umbrella, his wife and daughter, and a stall of mussels presided over by an old woman with skin like seaweed. Just above the beach, on one side of the road leading up the gorge, is a miniature barn with a red cupola, which is the Casino, and, on the other, a long, narrow, blue-washed building with the words written in great black letters across the façade, "Hôtel de la Plage."