The morning had sped by all too quickly, and by now the other bathers had gone and the beach was empty, and Colin plunged once more into that beloved sea. The cool, brisk welcome of it encompassed him, its vigour seemed to penetrate his very marrow and brain with its incomparable refreshment, and he began to think of this problem with a magical lucidity....
Colin regretfully left the water and put his clothes into the boat in which he had been rowed round from the Marina, meaning to dress on the way there. Young Antonio, the son of Giacomo, Philip’s old boatman, had brought him round here, and was now asleep in a strip of shadow at the top of the beach, waiting till Colin was ready to return. There he lay, with his shirt open at the neck and a carnation perched behind his ear, lithe and relaxed like some splendid young Faun. The boy’s mouth smiled as he slept.
Was he dreaming, thought Colin, of some amorous adventure proper to his age and beauty? His black hair grew low on his forehead, the black lashes swept his smooth, brown cheek; it seemed a pity to awake him, and for a minute or two Colin studied his face. Violet before now had remarked on his extraordinary resemblance, except in point of colouring, to Colin, and he wondered if, through his noble Viagi blood, they were related. He liked to think he resembled this merry Nino; he would almost have been willing to give him his blueness of eye and golden hair, and take in exchange that glossy black, which caught the tints of the sky among its curls.
Then Nino stirred, stretched a lazy arm and found his hand resting on Colin’s shoulder. At that he sprang up.
“Ah, pardon, signor,” he said. “I slept. You have not been waiting?”
Colin had picked up Italian with great ease and quickness; it came naturally to his tongue.
“I’ve been watching you smiling as you slept, Nino,” he said. “What have you been dreaming about?”
Nino laughed. “And if I was not dreaming of the signorino himself,” he cried.
“What about me?” demanded Colin.
“Oh, just a pack of nonsense,” he said. “We were in the boat, and it moved of itself without my rowing, and together we sat in the stern, and I was telling you the stories of the island. You have heard the most of them, I think, by now.... Are you not going to dress?”