“Even San Francesco looks weary to-day,” he said, glancing across the pool at the Saint on his pedestal. “I should not be surprised if, when we return, we find that he has laid down his cross and is reclining like the tired fishermen who come here in the night. Where shall we go?”
“To the Grotto of Virgil.”
“I wonder if Virgil was ever in his grotto? I wonder if he ever came here on such a day of scirocco as this, and felt that the world was very old, and he was even older than the world?”
“Do you feel like that to-day?”
“I feel that this is a world suitable for the old, for those who have white hairs to accord with the white waters, and whose nights are the white nights of age.”
“Was that why you were smiling so strangely just now when I came in?”
“Yes.”
He rowed on softly. The boat slipped out of the Pool of the Saint, and then they saw the Capo Coroglio and the Island of Nisida with its fort. On their right, and close to them, rose the weary-looking cliffs, honey-combed with caverns, and seamed with fissures as an old and haggard face is seamed with wrinkles that tell of many cares.
“Here is the grotto,” said Hermione, almost directly. “Row in gently.”
He obeyed her and turned the boat, sending it in under the mighty roof of rock.