Betty took to going into all the churches she came to, to see if Tommy was there. She would sit down by the door and look at the praying people—the churches were thronged to-night—and dreamily wander into hazy speculations, soothed by the chanting voices and the sweet, heavy air, till she woke with a start, and so out again into the dim city, where the ashes came riding on the east wind like rain.
Once a carabiniere asked her where she was going, why she walked alone so in the disturbed city. She said:
'I am looking for my brother. Have you seen him? He is like me, only he carries a sketch-book and a pencil; and what do you suppose is likely to have happened to him?'
The carabiniere conveyed by a shrug that he could not say.
'But something is more likely to happen to you. It's a bad night to be walking in the town. All kinds of ruffians are about.'
That, being irrelevant, Betty did not hear.
It was strange how every one was abroad in Naples to-night. In the Piazza Sant' Angelo, a little after five o'clock, Betty met Warren Venables. She said to him:
'Help me, please, to find Tommy.'
He looked gently at her—they had hurt one another so badly that nothing but gentleness seemed possible between them now—and divined (it was a fresh hurt to him) how entirely he was a shadow to her; how the world was a crowded shadow-land, through which she moved alone, seeking the one reality, her other self. His discernment let him realize how all things but one must have slipped away through the wild hours of the night. He knew it by her wide, unseeing eyes, her strained, sallow face, the mechanic words, which were her only greeting. He was glad to be able to do her at least this service; he was glad to be at her side, taking care of her, though it might be only as an unnoticed shadow. It was in his mind, but not in hers, how she had not long since begged him not to see her any more.
He said gently: