"Is that that I have repeated to you what a girl ought to do?" Natalie said, almost calmly. "Do you think it is what my mother would have done, Madame Potecki? They have told me she was a brave woman."
CHAPTER XXXI.
IN A GARDEN AT POSILIPO.
"—Prends mon coeur, me dit-elle,
Oui, mais a la chapelle,
Sois mon petit....
—Plait-il
Ton petit?
—Sois mon petit mari!"
—It was Calabressa who was gayly humming to himself; and it was well that he could amuse himself with his chansons and his cigarettes, for his friend Edwards was proving anything but an attentive companion. The tall, near-sighted, blond-faced man from the British Museum was far too much
engrossed by the scene around him. They were walking along the quays at Naples; and it so happened that at this moment all the picturesque squalor and lazy life of the place were lit up by the glare reflected from a wild and stormy sunset. The tall, pink-fronted houses; the mules and oxen with their brazen yokes and tinkling bells; the fruit-sellers, and fish-sellers, and water-carriers, in costumes of many hues; the mendicant friars with their cloak and hood of russet-brown; the priests black and clean-shaven; the groups of women, swarthy of face, with head-dresses of red or yellow, clustered round the stalls; the children, in rags of brown, and scarlet, and olive-green, lying about the pavement as if artists had posed them there—all these formed a picture which was almost bewildering in its richness of color, and was no doubt rendered all the more brilliant because of the powerful contrast with the dark and driven sea. For the waters out there were racing in before a stiff breeze, and springing high on the fortresses and rocks; and the clouds overhead were seething and twisting, with many a sudden flash of orange; and then, far away beyond all this color and motion and change, rose the vast and gloomy bulk of Vesuvius, overshadowed and thunderous, as if the mountain were charged with a coming storm.
Calabressa grew impatient, despite his careless song.
"—Me seras tu fidele....
—Comme une tourterelle.
—Eh bieu, ca va....
Ca va!
—Ca me va!
—Comme ca, ca me va!
—Diable, Monsieur Edouarts! You are very silent. You do not know where we are going, perhaps?"