II
The pink villa was indeed a delicious nest, to use the Englishman's phrase. It crowned one of the perpendicular cliffs of Sorrento, its rosy façade overlooking what is perhaps the most beautiful expanse of water in the world—the Bay of Naples. The broad terrace stretched from the drawing room windows to the verge of the precipice; leaning against its strong stone parapet, with one's elbows comfortably supported on the flat top (which supported also several battered goddesses of marble), enjoying the shade of a lemon-tree set in a great vase of tawny terra-cotta—leaning thus, one could let one's idle gaze drop straight down into the deep blue water below, or turn it to the white line of Naples opposite, shining under castled heights, to Vesuvius with its plume of smoke, or to beautiful dark Ischia rising from the waves in the west, guarding the entrance to the sea. On each side, close at hand, the cliffs of Sorrento stretched away, tipped with their villas, with their crowded orange and lemon groves. Each villa had its private stairway leading to the beach below; strange dark passages, for the most part cut in the solid rock, winding down close to the face of the cliff, so that every now and then a little rock-window can let in a gleam of light to keep up the spirits of those who are descending. For every one does descend: to sit and read among the rocks; to bathe from the bathing-house on the fringe of beach; to embark for a row to the grottos or a sail to Capri.
The afternoon which followed the first visit of Philip Dallas to the pink villa found him there a second time; again he was on the terrace with Fanny. The plunging sea-birds of the terrace's mosaic floor were partially covered by a large Persian rug, and it was upon this rich surface that the easy-chairs were assembled, and also the low tea-table, which was of a construction so solid that no one could possibly knock it over. A keen observer had once said that that table was in itself a sufficient indication that Fanny's house was furnished to attract masculine, not feminine, visitors (a remark which was perfectly true).
"You are the sun of a system of masculine planets, Fanny," said Dallas. "After long years, that is how I find you."
"Oh, Philip—we who live so quietly!"
"So is the sun quiet, I suppose; I have never heard that he howled. Mr. Gordon-Gray, Mark Ferguson, Pierre de Vernueil, Horace Bartholomew, unknown Americans. Do they come to see Eva or you?"
"They come to see the view—as you do; to sit in the shade and talk. I give very good dinners too," Fanny added, with simplicity.
"O romance! good dinners on the Bay of Naples!"
"Well, you may laugh; but nothing draws men of a certain age—of a certain kind, I mean; the most satisfactory men, in short—nothing draws them so surely as a good dinner delicately served," announced Fanny, with decision. "Please go and ring for the tea."