"I knew—I read."
"What did you know? What did you read?" asked Lucio Sabini in a strong, vibrant voice.
"In the papers ... a few lines ... I read of Miss Lilian Temple's accident," added Vittorio in a low voice.
"You mean to say Miss Lilian Temple's death, my friend," exclaimed Lucio, with a strange accent; "she is dead, my friend."
"I did not wish to pronounce the word death, my friend," Vittorio replied quietly.
Now they were alone on the terrace, on which the evening was descending. Everyone had left to take the little steamer back to Venice from the other side of the Lido. The terrace was quite deserted, and all the Lido shore, whose yellow sand remained bright beneath the evening shadows; and deserted the ample Adriatic, now of the deepest green in the evening gloom.
"She was twenty," said a weak, feeble voice, which Vittorio hardly recognised as Lucio's.
"It is very early to die."
"I ought to have died, I who am thirty-seven, and have lived double that time, I who am tired, old, and finished with everything. It was just that I should die, not she, who was twenty," said the weak voice.
"But how did the accident happen?" asked Vittorio.