boat at some distance, moving slowly in the direction of
Posilipo.

"I have been talking with them. One says he is of my country, a
Sicilian."

"The boy?"

"Si, Signore, the giovinotto. But he cannot speak Sicilian, and he has
never been in Sicily, poveretto!"

Gaspare spoke with an accent of pity in which there was almost a hint of
contempt.

"A rivederci, Signore," he added, pushing off the little boat.

"A rivederci, Gaspare."

Artois took the oars and paddled very gently out, keeping near to the
cliffs of the opposite shore.

"Even San Francesco looks weary to-day," he said, glancing across the
pool at the Saint on his pedestal. "I should not be surprised if, when
we return, we find that he has laid down his cross and is reclining like
the tired fishermen who come here in the night. Where shall we go?"

"To the Grotto of Virgil."

"I wonder if Virgil was ever in his grotto? I wonder if he ever came
here on such a day of scirocco as this, and felt that the world was very
old, and he was even older than the world?"

"Do you feel like that to-day?"

"I feel that this is a world suitable for the old, for those who have
white hairs to accord with the white waters, and whose nights are the
white nights of age."

"Was that why you were smiling so strangely just now when I came in?"

"Yes."

He rowed on softly. The boat slipped out of the Pool of the Saint, and
then they saw the Capo Coroglio and the Island of Nisida with its
fort. On their right, and close to them, rose the weary-looking cliffs,
honey-combed with caverns, and seamed with fissures as an old and
haggard face is seamed with wrinkles that tell of many cares.

"Here is the grotto," said Hermione, almost directly. "Row in gently."

He obeyed her and turned the boat, sending it in under the mighty roof
of rock.

A darkness fell upon them. They had a safe, enclosed sensation in
escaping for a moment from the white day, almost as if they had escaped
from a white enemy.

Artois let the oars lie still in the water, keeping his hands lightly
upon them, and both Hermione and he were silent for a few minutes,
listening to the tiny sounds made now and then by drops of moisture
which fell from the cavern roof softly into the almost silent sea. At
last Artois said:

"You are out of the whiteness now. This is a shadowed place like a
confessional, where murmuring lips tell to strangers the stories of
their lives. I am not a stranger, but tell me,