earing flamboyant hats, and gazing into the eyes of the watching men
ranged along the low wall on the sea-side with a cool steadiness that
was almost Oriental. Some of them were talking. But by far the greater
number leaned back almost immobile against their cushions; and their
pale faces showed nothing but the languid consciousness of being
observed and, perhaps, desired. Stout Neapolitan fathers, with bulging
eyes, immense brown cheeks, and peppery mustaches, were promenading
with their children and little dogs, looking lavishly contented
with themselves. Young girls went primly past, holding their narrow,
well-dressed heads with a certain virginal stiffness that was yet not
devoid of grace, and casting down eyes that were supposed not yet to be
enlightened. Their governesses and duennas accompanied them. Barefooted
brown children darted in and out, dodging pedestrians and horses.
Priests and black-robed students chattered vivaciously. School-boys with
peaked caps hastened homeward. The orphans from Queen Margherita's Home,
higher up the hill, marched sturdily through the dust to the sound of a
boyish but desperately martial music. It was a wonderfully vivid world,
but the eyes of Artois wandered away from it, over the terraces, the
houses, and the tree-tops. Their gaze dropped down to the sea. Far off,
Capri rose out of the light mist produced by the heat. And beyond was
Sicily.

Why had that woman, Ruffo's mother, wept just now? What was her tragedy?
he wondered. Accurately he recalled her face, broad now, and seamed with
the wrinkles brought by trouble and the years.

He recalled, too, Ruffo's attitude as the boy listened to her vehement,
her almost violent harangue. How boyish, how careless it had been--yet
not unkind or even disrespectful, only wonderfully natural and
wonderfully young.

"He was the deathless boy."

Suddenly those words started into Artois' mind. Had he read them
somewhere? For a moment he wondered. Or had he heard them? They seemed
to suggest speech, a voice whose intonations he knew. His mind was still
fatigued by work, and would not be commanded by his will. Keeping his
eyes fixed on the ethereal outline of Capri, he strove to remember,
to find the book which had contained these words and given them to his
eyes, or the voice that had spoken them and given them to his ears.

"He was the deathless boy."

A piano-organ struck up below him, a little way up the hill to the
right, and above i