“Good-night, Signora.”
She smiled at him.
“You see, after all, you have had to say good-night to me!”
“Signora,” he answered, earnestly, “even if I do not come to say good-night to you always, I shall stay with you till death.”
Again he made the little noise with his nose, as he turned away and went out of the room.
That night, as she got into bed, Hermione called down on that faithful watch-dog’s dark head a blessing, the best that heaven contained for him. Then she put out the light, and lay awake so long that when a boat came round the cliff from the Saint’s Pool to the open sea, in the hour before the dawn, she heard the soft splash of the oars in the water and the sound of a boy’s voice singing.
“Oh, dolce luna bianca de l’ Estate
Mi fugge il sonno accanto a la marina:
Mi destan le dolcissime serate
Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
She lifted herself up on her pillow and listened—listened until across the sea, going towards the dawn, the song was lost.
“Gli occhi di Rosa e il mar di Mergellina.”
When the voice was near, had not Maurice seemed near to her? And when it died away, did not he fade with it—fade until the Ionian waters took him?