ng to be frightened about.'

It was irrelevant; Betty heard it as from a great distance; she was
looking for Tommy--looking for him at street corners, going up steep
climbing _vicoli_ and down again, searching all the faces in the crowd.
The shadow kept patiently at her side, with a shrug for the folly of it.
The storm and the earthquake had certainly dazed her, set her wits
wandering; he advised her many times to go home and sleep, since the
shocks were now over and would very likely not recur.

'Tommy may be home by now,' the shadow said.

Betty shook her head; she knew that in the dim room nothing stirred but
the flickering lamp. She looked for Tommy.

Out of the Toledo they came into the Piazza del Plebiscito, and so down
the Strada del Gigante to Santa Lucia by the sea, where Tommy was so
often, but was not now. Looking from Santa Lucia across the black bay,
they saw the blazing game that the fiery cone was still playing untired;
the earth's groaning sounded above the sweeping of the shaken sea.

Into the town they plunged again, Betty and the protesting shadow, who
wanted to go to bed. The storm had dropped; upon the wind of dawn came
the red rain of the cinders, the black clouds of the dust, blinding and
choking. Behind these the grey morning grew; a dim day broke slowly on
the tired, shaken city.

Since he could not prevail on Betty to go home, Luli went home himself;
he could not walk the streets all night looking for Tommy, who was, no
doubt, well amused somewhere.

'It isn't a fit night for you to be out,' he told Betty, 'but I am
falling asleep: I must have rest. What would you have? You'd much better
go home too.'

So they parted.

Betty took to going into all the churches she came to, to see if Tommy
was there. She would sit down by the door and look at the praying
people--the churches were thronged to-night--and dreamily wander into
hazy speculations, soothed by the chanting voices and the sweet, heavy
air, till she woke with a start, and so out again into the dim city,
where the ashes came riding on the east wind like rain.

Once a _carabiniere_ asked her where she was going, why she walked alone
so in the disturbed city. She said:

'I am looking for my brother. Have you seen him? He is like me, only he
carries a sketch-book and a pencil; and what do you suppose is likely to
have happened to him?'

The _carabiniere_ conveyed by a shrug that he could not say.

'But something is more likely