She leaned against the door of the shop and closed her eyes very tight.
“I will not look,” she thought, “I will only listen, and it will be for a little as if I were back in my island.”
And because there is nothing like music to remind one of places, unless it be scent, a picture arose behind her closed eyelids, of the quiet dark water, of the broad golden path of the moon, and of the little boat that glided through the gold; and as she watched the picture, two tears trickled from the eyes that were shut, and ran down her cheeks.
“Now, my girl,” said a voice beside her suddenly, “here are your sardines!” and a greasy paper was thrust into her hand.
Oh, how it hurt, to have to open her eyes, to take what was given to her, to pay her lepta, and to stumble out half dazed into the street.
Once there, she thought for a moment that she was still dreaming, for on the side walk, talking to a man in a straw hat, was an old sea captain in the cross-over vest and the baggy blue breeches such as she had seen hundreds of times on the quay at home.
“The wind has turned a little chilly,” the man in the straw hat was saying, “and there are many clouds in the sky. It will rain I think before night.”
Mattina instinctively raised her eyes to the west, and half unconsciously repeated what she had so often heard her father say:—
“If but the Western sky be clear,
Though East be black, you need not fear.”