d in the
swiftness of their movements there was something that was sad. Or was
it, perhaps, only pathetic, wistful with the wistfulness of the sea
and of all nocturnal things? Artois did not ask, but his attention, the
attention of mind and soul, was held by these distant voiceless beings
as by a magic. And Vere was still as he was, tense as he was. All the
poetry that lay beneath his realism, all the credulity that slept below
his scepticism, all the ignorance that his knowledge strove to dominate,
had its wild moment of liberty under the smiling stars. The lights moved
and swayed. Now the seamed rock, with its cold veins and slimy crevices
was gilded, its nudity clothed with fire. Now on the water a trail
of glory fell, and travelled and died. Now the red men were utterly
revealed, one watching with an ardor that was surely not of this world,
some secret in the blackness, another turning as if to strike in defence
of his companion. Then both fell back and were taken by the night. And
out of the night came a strong voice across the water.

"Madre di Dio, che splendore!"

Artois got up, turned the boat, and began to row gently away, keeping
near the base of the cliffs. He meant to take Vere back at once to the
island, leaving the impression made upon her by the men of the fire
vivid, and undisturbed by speech. But when they came to the huge mouth
of the Grotto of Virgil, Vere said:

"Go in for a moment, please, Monsieur Emile."

He obeyed, thinking that the mother's love for this dark place was
echoed by the child. Since his conversation with Hermione on the day of
scirocco he had not been here, and as the boat glided under the hollow
blackness of the vault, and there lay still, he remembered their
conversation, the unloosing of her passion, the strength and tenacity of
the nature she had shown to him, gripping the past with hands almost as
unyielding as the tragic hands of death.

And he waited in silence, and with a deep expectation, for the
revelation of the child. It seemed to him that Vere had her purpose in
coming here, as Hermione had had hers. And once more the words of the
old man in "Pelleas and Melisande" haunted him. Once more he heard them
in his heart.

"Now it's the child's turn."

Vere dropped her right hand over the gunwale till it touched the sea,
making a tiny splash.

"Monsieur Emile!" she said.

"Yes, Vere."

"Do you believe in the evil eye?"

Artois did not know what he had expected