after the briefest pause, "Mere
idle and impertinent curiosity," he postulated, "is one thing: honest
neighbourly interest is another. If I were a bolder man, I should ask
you point-blank what part of Italy your part of Italy is."

Susanna (all a soft whiteness, in her white frock, in the mellow
penumbra of the pine-grove) leaned back, and softly laughed.

"My part of Italy? That is not altogether easy to tell," she said,
considering. "In one sense, my part of Italy is Rome. I belong to a
Roman family, and am politically a subject of the Holy Father,--what
though, for the moment, his throne be usurped by the Duke of Savoy, and
his prerogatives exercised by the Camorra. But then my part of Italy
is also Venice. We are Venetians, if to have had a house in Venice for
some four hundred years is sufficient to constitute folk Venetians.
But the part of Italy where I most often live, the part I like best, is
a part you will never have heard of--a little castaway island in the
Adriatic, about fifty miles north from Ancona: a little mountainous
island, all fragrant of rosemary and basil, all grey with
olive-trees,--all grey, save where the grey is broken by the green of
vineyards, or the white and green of villas with their gardens, or the
white and red of villages, with their red roofs, and white walls and
campanili,--all grey, and yet all blue and gold, between the blue sea
and the blue sky, in the golden light,--the little, unknown, beautiful
island of Sampaolo."

She was actress enough to look unconscious and unconcerned, as she
pronounced the name of Sampaolo. Her eyes gazed dreamily far away, as
if they could behold an air-vision of her island. At the same time, I
suspect, they kept a vigilant side-watch on Anthony.

Did Anthony give never so slightly perceptible a start? Did _his_ eyes
quicken? Did he colour a little? At all events, we need not question,
he was aware of a sudden throb of excitement,--on the spur of which,
without stopping to reflect, "Really?" he exclaimed. "That is a very
odd coincidence. Sampaolo--I know all about it."

"Indeed?" said Susanna, looking surprise. "You have been there? It is
rarely visited by travellers--except commercial ones."

"No, I have never been there," he answered, so far truthfully enough.
"But--but I know--I used to know--a man whose--a man who had," he
concluded lamely. For, when he did stop to reflect, "If you care for
an amusing situation," he reflected,