Her face was flushed slightly, high on the cheeks close under the eyes; between the fair eyebrows a perpendicular line was visible; for the moment, she showed to the full her thirty years.
"Yes, I am tired; and it's dangerous to tire me," she answered, smiling. She had recovered her light-hearted carelessness.
Ash still looked at her. A sudden conviction seemed to seize him. "Don't throw me over, Pauline," he pleaded. And as he spoke, on his brown, deeply lined face there was an expression which was boyishly young and trusting.
"As I told you, so long as there is no one else," Pauline answered.
The next moment they were flying over the plain.
III
The table d'hôte of the Star of Italy, the Salerno inn from whose mysteries (of eels and chestnuts) Mrs. Preston had fled—this unctuous table d'hôte had been unusually brilliant during this month of March; upon several occasions there had been no less than fifteen travellers present, and the operatic young landlord himself, with his affectionate smile, had come in to hand the peas.
The most unnoticed person was always a tall woman of fifty-five, who, entering with noiseless step, slipped into her chair so quickly and furtively that it seemed as if she were afraid of being seen standing upon her feet. Once in her place, she ate sparingly, looking neither to the right nor the left, holding her knife and fork with care, and laying them down cautiously, as though she were trying not to waken some one who was asleep. But the table d'hôte of the Star of Italy was never asleep; the travellers, English and American, could not help feeling that they were far from home on this shore where so recently brigands had prowled. It is well known that this feeling promotes conversation.
One evening a pink-cheeked woman, who wore a little round lace cap perched on the top of her smooth gray hair, addressed the silent stranger at her left hand. "You have been to Pæstum, I dare say?" she said, in her pleasant English voice.
"No."