been his
embarrassment had I embraced him in our own fashion.

"And perhaps you will sail on the 'Princess Irene,' after all," I cried.

"No," he shook his head sadly, "it will not happen. I have not been
worth it."

Chapter Seven

That Naples of mine is like a soiled coronet of white gems, sparkling
only from far away. But I love it altogether, near or far, and my heart
would have leaped to return to it for its own sake, but to come to it
as we did, knowing that the only lady in the world was there.... Again,
this is one of those things I possess no knowledge how to tell, and that
those who know do know. How I had longed for the time to come, how I had
feared it, how I had made pictures of it!

Yet I feared not so much as my friend, for he had a dim, small hope,
and I had none. How could I have? I--a man whose head had been painted?
I--for whom her great heart had sorrowed as for the thin, beaten
cab-horses of Paris! Hope? All I could hope was that she might never
know, and I be left with some little shred of dignity in her eyes!

Who cannot see that it was for my friend to fear? At times, with him, it
was despair, but of that brave kind one loves to see--never a quiver of
the lip, no winking of the eyes to keep tears back. And I, although of
a people who express everything in every way, I understood what passed
within him and found time to sorrow for him.

Most of all, I sorrowed for him as we waited for her on the terrace of
the Bertolini, that perch on the cliff so high that even the noises
of the town are dulled and mingle with the sound of the thick surf far
below.

Across the city, and beyond, we saw, from the terrace, the old mountain
of the warm heart, smoking amiably, and the lights of Torre del Greco at
its feet, and there, across the bay, I beheld, as I had nightly so long
ago, the lamps of Castellamare, of Sorrento; then, after a stretch of
water, a twinkling which was Capri. How good it was to know that all
these had not taken advantage of my long absence to run away and vanish,
as I had half feared they would. Those who have lived here love them
well; and it was a happy thought that the beautiful lady knew them now,
and shared them. I had never known quite all their loveliness until I
felt that she knew it too. This was something that I must never tell
her--yet what happiness there was in it!

I stood close to the railing, with a rambling gaze over this enchanted
earth and sea and sky, w