It would have been easy to tow the boat: there was a narrow path trodden out along the margin by the feet of the men who still dragged the slow weight of their flat-bottomed barges, laden with barrels of oil and sacks of corn, in preference to sending the merchandise to Pisa by the new line of railway. But Dino liked better the labour of rowing against the sluggish current. The monotonous action soothed him like the reiteration of old words which carried pleasant memories. He felt more himself with the oars in his strong young hands; and the long regular sweep of the blades was like a visible sign of the vigour and force of his determination. About nine o'clock it felt very warm upon the water. The March sun shining behind the thin gray veil of mist, filled the sky with a diffused whitish glare,—and there was no escaping it, no possibility of shadow. By the time he had rowed eight or ten miles Dino was glad enough to act on Valdez's suggestion, and run the boat to land under the shelter of some drooping alders. They stretched themselves out luxuriously on the short new grass, where a point of smooth ground projected for a few feet from the bank. The water gurgled with a cool liquid sound as it hurried past them, and the air was sweet with the smell of bruised herbs. There was a tuft of scented thyme growing by Dino's feet. He plucked off a leaf or two and held them in his hand while he said:

'It is pleasant being here, Valdez.'

'Ay, lad.'

'I like rowing. I like everything which implies being out-of-doors,—doing something and being no one in particular. If I had to live over again, Valdez, I'd have more to do with men than books.'

'You may be right there, lad, there's no saying. After all, a man's personal experience is the only reality; the rest is mere hearsay.'

Dino crushed the aromatic herbs closer within his hands, and rubbed them over his face. 'Valdez!' he said abruptly, 'that man over there,—in Rome,—you know whom I mean—I know nothing about him; he has done me no harm.'

'No, lad. And I see what you mean. But that's just the puzzling part of it—when things pull both ways. But there must come a time in a man's life when he ceases to ask himself questions, when he must give up even wanting to know how well he may be doing the work that's been set before him, or else the work doesn't get itself done. For, look you, lad, in a way, what is absolutely bad is nearly as satisfactory as what is absolutely good. It's black or white; and a man—a man, I say—can understand either. But it's the thing between—it's life—which upsets our calculations.'

'It's so damned hard to know that, do what one will, one can never get any credit for it. If you stake your life on any desperate attempt to make things a little better, people always imagine it was your own choice, you liked doing it. They don't ask what it was that made you give up the pleasantness; if you get credit for anything, it's only credit for a morbid taste for being wretched.'

'Credit from society? credit for what you do? why, lad, who gives credit for anything now, except the tradesmen? And they are not in society,' said Valdez, with a short laugh. He pulled the brim of his shabby felt hat farther down over his eyes. 'Society cheapens life. Makes it full of small interests, small triumphs, small, bitter disappointments. I've been through it; I've seen enough of it in my day.'

'Valdez,' said Dino, looking at him rather curiously, 'you must have been leading a very different sort of life before you came to Leghorn? You yourself must have been very different?'