There was silence at last; the room was getting dim with evening. Mrs. Pellegrini spoke:
“And you wiped it off her stomach, did you, Jerry?”
“I did,” said he.
Mrs. Pellegrini turned to Arthur and said in a sharp voice:
“Fill that pot for the gentleman!”
The young man in terror obeyed, he exceedingly obeyed.
When the last pot was emptied Jerry and Larry and the wretched mute went off along the road together. Rosa Pellegrini said “So long” to me and drove off with her cavalcade. The inn was empty and quiet again so you could hear the water at the outfall.
I walked along the bank of the old river until I came to the lock where the water roaring windily from the lasher streamed like an old man’s beard; a pair of swans moved in the slack water of the pool. Away there was a fine lea of timothy grass looking as soft as wool. And at the end of the lea there was a low long hill covered with trees full of the arriving darkness; a train that you could not hear the noise of shot through a grove and poured a long spool of white fume upon the trees quietly, a thing to be looking at, it was so white and soft. But I was thinking ... thinking ... thinking of the grand white slim woman who did not seem dead at all to me, lying with a lily in her hand, a red rose in her hair. And I could not think it to be true at all; I believe Jerry was only telling us one of his tales.
ARABESQUE