to happen to you. It's a bad night to be
walking in the town. All kinds of ruffians are about.'

That, being irrelevant, Betty did not hear.

It was strange how every one was abroad in Naples to-night. In the
Piazza Sant' Angelo, a little after five o'clock, Betty met Warren
Venables. She said to him:

'Help me, please, to find Tommy.'

He looked gently at her--they had hurt one another so badly that nothing
but gentleness seemed possible between them now--and divined (it was a
fresh hurt to him) how entirely he was a shadow to her; how the world
was a crowded shadow-land, through which she moved alone, seeking the
one reality, her other self. His discernment let him realize how all
things but one must have slipped away through the wild hours of the
night. He knew it by her wide, unseeing eyes, her strained, sallow face,
the mechanic words, which were her only greeting. He was glad to be able
to do her at least this service; he was glad to be at her side, taking
care of her, though it might be only as an unnoticed shadow. It was in
his mind, but not in hers, how she had not long since begged him not to
see her any more.

He said gently:

'You're tired; you must go home. Tommy is all right.'

She said:

'I want Tommy. Help me, please, to find Tommy.'

He walked at her side, through the rain of the dust, which lay thick on
the streets and gritted underfoot as they walked. Neither ever forgot
that harsh gritting, or the sulphurous breath of that dim dawn. It hurt
them both in memory for always.

There is a narrow alley which leads up out of the Strada San Biagio,
climbing a little. They went up it--Betty neglected no street--and there
they found Tommy.

Some scaffolding had fallen, tossed down by the storm or the earthquake,
in a corner where no one passed. Tommy lay with his face to the street,
his sketch-book clutched in the hand of one flung-out arm, the other arm
pinned to his side, with a twelve-foot plank across his back and two
poles across his legs. Tommy and the scaffolding both wore a coat an
inch deep of black dust.

Venables lifted away the plank: it took most of his strength; then he
moved the poles. Then he turned Tommy over very gently, and the black
dust drifted down on to the upturned face. Betty raised it on to her lap
and shielded it with her two hands, saying always, and not knowing what
she said:

'Tommy--Tommy--Tommy.'

Venables said:

'I will fetch help. I will be as quick as I