But Sophy felt very worried. She was essentially the old-fashioned woman where the regularity of masculine meals was concerned. In regard to food, men impressed her as machines that would run down or collapse altogether unless stoked, so to speak, at exact intervals. Women were flightier, more happy-go-lucky creatures, when the solemnities of eating were in question. She had been thoroughly grounded in this conception of the matter by her husband. Amaldi guessed as much.
"My dear lady, if only you could know how often I make a meal off of rye bread and cheese; when I'm out for a day's sailing," he said. "Really my dinner hasn't the gigantic importance for me that your kindness imagines."
He spoke rather stilted English sometimes when he was serious as now, but Sophy loved it, because he was trying to make her feel less self-reproachful.
"It's very, very good of you, Marchese, to want to make me feel less dreadfully selfish," she now said. "But"—her tone was mournful—"these hours on the water have made me dreadfully hungry—so I can imagine what you are feeling!"
Amaldi laughed. At the same instant he had a veritable inspiration. Her remark in reference to the servants showed him how far she was from any conventional pruderies.
"I'll tell you what we can do—if you approve," he said. "The Isola Pescatori is just over there to our left. Do you see? Where the lights cluster in a little bunch there? We could land there and have an excellent dinner."
"Oh, what fun! I should love it!" she cried, without an instant's hesitation.
"Benone! Benissimo!" he said, lapsing into Italian as he always did when excited or deeply moved.
It was now after eight. The purplish dusk was velvet overhead, and silken smooth below. Stresa to the left, and Pallanza far away to the northeast, fretted the twilight with points of orange. Between the scudding clouds stars flitted in and out like fireflies. There was the soft, orange glow from a rising moon behind the Sasso di Perro. Its huge crouching bulk seemed steaming with phosphorus.
Now they were under the lee of the little island. Sophy saw the clustered houses jutting above her, and a wide terrace, brightly lighted, under its pergola of grape-vines. People were eating there at little tables. She could see their heads above the wall. They had dined already, for it was fruit and nuts that they were lifting to their mouths. It seemed droll to see these greedy heads peeping above the terrace.