“Si, Signore,” said the boy, smiling. “The Signorina gave me ten.”
And he blew out a happy cloud.
There was something in his welcoming readiness of response, something in his look and voice, that seemed to stir within the tenacious mind of Artois a quivering chord of memory.
“I wonder if I have spoken to that boy in Naples?” he thought, as he mounted the steps behind Vere.
Hermione met him at the door of her room, and they went in almost directly to lunch with Vere. When the meal was over Vere disappeared, without saying why, and Hermione and Artois returned to Hermione’s room to have coffee. By this time the day was absolutely windless, the sky had become nearly white, and the sea was a pale gray, flecked here and there with patches of white.
“This is like a June day of scirocco,” said Artois, as he lit his pipe with the air of a man thoroughly at home. “I wonder if it will succeed in affecting Vere’s spirits. This morning, when I arrived, she looked wildly young. But the day held still some blue then.”
Hermione was settling herself slowly in a low chair near the window that faced Capri. The curious, rather ghastly light from the sea fell over her.
“Vere is very sensitive to almost all influences,” she said. “You know that, Emile.”
“Yes,” he said, throwing away the match he had been using; “and the influence of this morning roused her to joy. What was it?”
“She was very excited watching a diver for frutti di mare.”