13Sir Robert watched the first pale flush of the dawn light the sky and then spread, growing golden and yet more golden every moment, until the whole vista of sea, sky and land was ablaze with brilliant colour. As he watched, he thought, as he had done often before, that it all had a sense of unreality about it. It was both as beautiful and as ephemeral as a dream.
That, he thought suddenly, was the right way to look at Monte Carlo. It was a dream world one could enter for a little while and accept as lightly and as unselfconsciously as one accepted the dreams which pass in the night. It was a place made for enjoyment, for excitement and often for happiness, but it was never meant to be lived in or to be a foundation on which one could build a real life or the future.
It had a loveliness
