“Will you write it down for me?” she requested. “It is pretty.”
And I wrote it for her on the back of one of my cards.
IX
After dinner we crossed the garden again, and again stood by the sea-wall. Over us the soft spring night was like a dark sapphire. Points of red, green, and yellow fire burned from the ships in the bay, and seemed of the same company as the stars above them. A rosy aureole in the sky, to the eastward, marked the smouldering crater of Vesuvius. Away in the Chiaja a man was singing comic songs, to an accompaniment of mandolines and guitars; comic songs that sounded pathetic, as they reached us in the distance.
I asked Zabetta how she wished to finish the evening.
“I don’t care,” said she.
“Would you like to go the play?”
“If you wish.”
“What do you wish?”
“I think I should like to stay here a little longer. It is pleasant.”