Helia had accepted. To travel with Phil would be to lengthen her torture; but, at least, she would see him.
At first, amid all these marble statues and bronze reliefs, Helia felt herself intimidated, habituated as she was to the coarsely painted scene-canvases and papier-mâché bronzes. But Ethel treated her as an equal—Ethel, who had the art to be respected without being unapproachable.
“Ask them to come up,” Ethel said to Suzanne. “It’s the finest hour of the day.”
The sea was mild. Great clouds were climbing above the horizon, while an enormous sun was slowly setting in splendor of molten gold.
“The duke was right,” Ethel said to Will. “From the point of view of Paris the legend of Morgana might seem ridiculous, but here, in the grandeur of such scene-setting, even the supernatural seems normal. How far away are the ant-hills of Paris and London! Only think how somewhere people are agitating themselves in fog and smoke, while we are sailing straight for dreamland and—isn’t it curious?—a duchy with sorceresses and fairies in its history, where legends a thousand years old still move the people. I wish to believe in it—I wish to see the return of Morgana!”
“Keep thy flight to the West, bold sailor;
The land thou seekest shall arise,
Even though it existed not,
From the depths of the waves to welcome thee.”
It was Phil, who arrived ahead of Caracal. He had heard Ethel, and capped her thought with verses from Schiller.