According to the calendar it was winter but between Mentone and the frontier town of
Ventimiglia on the white road inlaid like a strip of ivory on dark rocks above the sapphire of
the Mediterranean it was fierce summer in the sunshine. A girl riding between two men reined
in her chestnut mare at a cross-road which led into the jade-green twilight of an olive grove.
The men pulled up their horses also and all three came to a sudden halt at a bridge flung
across a swift but shallow river whose stony bed cleft the valley. The afternoon sunshine
poured down upon them burnishing the coils of the girl's hair to gold and giving a dazzling
brilliancy to a complexion which for twenty years to come need not fear the light of day. She
was gazing up the valley shut in on either side with thickly wooded hills their rugged heads
still gilded their shoulders already half in shadow but the eyes of the men rested only upon
her. [...] Reprint of the mystery novel originally released in 1909.
