n, and the long lashes half veiled her eyes. San Miniato watched
her narrowly.

"How beautiful! How beautiful!" she exclaimed twice, after a long
silence.

"It will be more beautiful still when the moon rises," said San Miniato.
"I am glad you are pleased."

She liked the simple words better, perhaps, than some of his rather
artificial speeches.

"Thank you," she said. "Thank you for bringing us here."

He had certainly taken a great deal of trouble, she thought, and it was
the least she could do, to thank him as she did. But she was really
grateful and for a moment she felt a sort of sympathy for him which she
had not felt before. He, at least, understood that one could like
something better in the world than the eternal terrace of a hotel with
its stiff orange trees, its ugly lanterns and its everlasting gossip and
chatter. He, at least, was a little unlike all those other people,
beginning with her own mother, who think of self first, comfort second,
and of others once a month or so, in the most favourable cases. Yet she
wondered a little about his past life, and whether he had ever spoken to
any woman with that ringing passion she had heard in Ruggiero's voice,
with that flashing look she had seen in the sailor's bright blue eyes.
It would be good to be spoken to like that. It would be good to see the
colour in a man's face change, and come and go, red and white like life
and death. It would be supremely good to be loved once, madly,
passionately, with body, heart and soul, to the very breaking of all
three--to be held in strong arms, to be kissed half to death.

She stopped, conscious that her mother would certainly not approve such
thoughts, and well aware in her girlish heart that she did not approve
them in herself. And then she smiled faintly. The man of her waking
vision was not like San Miniato. He was more like Ruggiero, the poor
sailor, who sat perched on the stern close behind her. She smiled
uneasily at the idea, and then she thought seriously of it for a moment.
If such a man as Ruggiero appeared, not as a sailor, but as a man of her
own world, would he not be a very lovable person, would he not turn the
heads of the languid ladies on the terrace of the hotel at Sorrento? The
thought annoyed her. Ruggiero, poor fellow, would have given his good
right arm to know that such a possibility had even crossed her
reflections. But it was not probable that he ever would know it, and he
sat in his place, si