“God's country,” said Pontycroft, “won't look like this, to be sure, nor give you a single blessed one of these fine emotions, these raptures. But after all, it's the first wrench that costs, says the prophet, and since we're not here entirely, he assures us, to amuse ourselves, a visit to God's country may prove a salutary if bitter pill to a young lady surfeited with the sweets of Europe.”
“Dio mio,” Ruth cried, “since when has Pontycroft turned moralist?”
“From the hour he was made to realise the fatal effects of reckless paradox,” Ponty answered, with mock solemnity.
They fell to chaffing one another as naturally as possible and the time flew.
“Genoa la Suferba, Genoa la Suferba! How perfectly, how radiantly the word describes her fits her,” murmured Ruth when, after a succession of tunnels, in the early afternoon, the sumptuous town burst upon them. The dazzling town, her flashing panoply of palaces, villas, gardens, churches, mounting up, and up—her hill, leaning firmly against the background of blue skies, blue as the Virgin Mary's robe.
“The imagination, the purpose, in those lines of architecture, those formal gardens!” cried Ruth. “How daring, uncompromising, beauty is in this land of Italy. And see, the Mediterranean, all sparkle and laughter there at her feet!” She leaned forward; then fell back against the cushions, savouring with heart as well as eyes the brilliant vision.
The train hammered heavily into the station.
“Ge—no—a! Ge—no—a!” The nasal cry reverberated through the glass-covered dome. There was noisy confusion of opening carriage doors, of passengers descending, calling, embracing, greeting; of porters running hither and yon; of trucks of luggage blocking the way amid a commotion of officialdom.
Ruth stood quietly in the uproar, and gazed upon it, and at Ponty's lank figure, while he dealt with the business of the occasion. Her heart was beating tumultuously. She felt a violent impulse to run away and hide herself.
“The beginning of the end,” she cried. “It is the beginning of the end. Why have I done this?”