st?

That was a great evening round the table at the Albergo del Sole. How
gloriously the air thickened with tobacco-smoke! What removal of empty
bottles and replacing them with full! The Germans were making it a set
_Kneipe_; the Englishmen, unable to drink quite so heroically, were
scarce behind in vehemence of debate. Mallard, grimly accepting the
help of wine against his inner foes, at length earned Elgar's approval;
he had relaxed indeed, and was no longer under the oppression of
English fog. But with him such moods were of brief duration; he
suddenly quitted the table, and went out into the night air.

The late moon was rising, amber-coloured on a sky of dusky azure. He
walked from the garden, across the road, and towards the ruins of the
Amphitheatre, which lie some distance apart from the Pompeian streets
that have been unearthed; he passed beneath an arch, and stood looking
down into the dark hollow so often thronged with citizens of Latin
speech. Small wonder that Benvenuto's necromancer could evoke his
myriads of flitting ghosts in the midnight Colosseum; here too it
needed but to stand for a few minutes in the dead stillness, and the
air grew alive with mysterious presences, murmurous with awful
whisperings. Mallard enjoyed it for awhile, but at length turned away
abruptly, feeling as if a cold hand had touched him.

As he re-entered the inn-precincts, he heard voices still uproarious in
the dining-room; but he had no intention of going among them again. His
bedroom was one of a row which opened immediately upon the garden. He
locked himself in, went to bed, but did not sleep for a long time. A
wind was rising, and a branch of a tree constantly tapped against the
pane. It might have been some centuries-dead inhabitant of Pompeii
trying to deliver a message from the silent world.

The breakfast-party next morning lacked vivacity. Clifford Marsh was
mute and dolorous of aspect; no doubt his personal embarrassments were
occupying him. Yesterday's wine had become his foe, instead of an ally
urging him to dare all in the cause of "art." He consumed his coffee
and roll in the manner of ordinary mortals, not once flourishing his
dainty hand or shaking his ambrosial hair. Elgar was very stiff from
his ascent of Vesuvius, and he too found that "the foam of life" had an
unpleasant after-taste, suggestive of wrecked fortunes and a dubious
future. Mallard was only a little gruffer than his wonted self.

"I am going