the
road and take the tram."

"Will you, Madre?"

Hermione saw in Vere's eyes that the girl was waiting for something.

"I'll go by myself, Vere," she said. "I should be bad company to-day.
The black dog is at my heels."

She laughed, and added:

"If I am late in coming back, have dinner without me."

"Very well, Madre."

Vere waited a moment; then as if desiring to break forcibly through the
restraint that bound them put out her hand to her mother's and said:

"Why don't you go to Naples and have dinner with Monsieur Emile? He
would cheer you up, and it is ages since we have seen him."

"Only two or three days. No, I won't disturb Emile. He may be working."

Vere felt that somehow her eager suggestion had deepened the constraint.
She said no more, and Hermione presently crossed over to the mainland
and began her walk to the road that leads from Naples to Bagnoli.

Where was she going? What was she really about to do?

Certainly she would not adopt the suggestion of Vere. Emile was the last
person whom she wished to see--by whom she wished to be seen--just then.

The narrow path turned away from the sea into the shadow of high banks.
She walked very slowly, like one out for a desultory stroll; a lizard
slipped across the warm earth in front of her, almost touching her foot,
climbed the bank swiftly, and vanished among the dry leaves with a faint
rustle.

She felt quite alone to-day in Italy, and far off, as if she had
no duties, no ties, as if she were one of those solitary, drifting,
middle-aged women who vaguely haunt the beaten tracks of foreign lands.
It was sultry in this path away from the sea. She was sharply conscious
of the change of climate, the inland sensation, the falling away of the
freedom from her, the freedom that seems to exhale from wave and wind of
the wave.

She walked on, meeting no one and still undecided what to do. The
thought of the Scoglio di Frisio returned to her mind, was dismissed,
returned again. She might go and dine there quietly alone. Was she
deceiving herself, and had she really made up her mind to go to the
Scoglio before she left the island? No, she had come away mainly because
she felt the need of solitude, the difficulty of being with Vere just
for this one night. To-morrow it would be different. It should be
different to-morrow.

She saw a row of houses in the distance, houses of poor people, and knew
that she was nearing the road. Clothes were hanging to dry