from the ships were wandering rather vaguely, watched and followed
by newspaper sellers, by touts, by greedy, pale-faced boys, and old,
worn-out men, all hungry for money and indifferent how it was gained.
Along the Marina, with its huge serpent of lights, the street singers
and players were making their nightly pilgrimage, pausing, wherever they
saw a lighted window or a dark figure on a balcony, to play and sing
the tunes of which they were weary long ago. On the wall, high above
the sea, were dotted the dilettante fishermen with their long rods and
lines. And below, before each stone staircase that descended to the
water, was a waiting boat, and in the moonlight rose up the loud cry of
"Barca! Barca!" to attract the attention of any casual passer-by.

And here, on this more truly sea-like sea, distant from the great crowd
and from the thronging houses, the real fishermen who live by the sea
were alert and at work, or were plunged in the quiet sleep that is a
preparation for long hours of nocturnal wakefulness.

Hermione thought of it all, was aware of it, felt it, as she sat there
opposite to the open window. Then she looked over to her writing-table,
on which stood a large photograph of her dead husband, then to the sofa
where Vere had been. She saw the volume of Rossetti lying beside the
cushion that still showed a shallow dent where the child's head had been
resting.

And then she shut her eyes, and asked her imagination to take her away
for a moment, over the sea to Messina, and along the curving shore, and
up by winding paths to a mountain, and into a little room in a tiny,
whitewashed house, not the house of the sea, but of the priest. It still
stood there, and the terrace was still before it. And the olive-trees
rustled, perhaps, just now in the wind beneath the stars.

Yes, she was there. Lucrezia and Gaspare were in bed. But she and
Maurice were sitting in the straw chairs on each side of the table,
facing the open French window and the flight of shallow steps that led
down to the terrace.

Faintly she heard the whisper of the sea about the islet, but she would
not let it hinder her imagination: she translated it by means of her
imagination into the whisper of the wind low down there, in the ravine
among the trees. And that act made her think of the ravine, seemed
presently to set her in the ravine. She was there in the night with
Gaspare. They were hurrying down towards the sea. He was behind her,
and