red, preceding a man in a green baize apron whom I had
never seen, carrying on an enormous tray three Argand lamps fitted into
vases of Pompeiian form. Rose distributed them over the room. In the
flood of soft light the winged youths and the butterfly women reappeared
on the panels, affected, gorgeous, callously unconscious of anything
having happened during their absence. Rose attended to the lamp on the
nearest mantelpiece, then turned about and asked in a confident
undertone.

"_Monsieur dine_?"

I had lost myself with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, but
I heard the words distinctly. I heard also the silence which ensued. I
sat up and took the responsibility of the answer on myself.

"Impossible. I am going to sea this evening."

This was perfectly true only I had totally forgotten it till then. For
the last two days my being was no longer composed of memories but
exclusively of sensations of the most absorbing, disturbing, exhausting
nature. I was like a man who has been buffeted by the sea or by a mob
till he loses all hold on the world in the misery of his helplessness.
But now I was recovering. And naturally the first thing I remembered was
the fact that I was going to sea.

"You have heard, Rose," Dona Rita said at last with some impatience.

The girl waited a moment longer before she said:

"Oh, yes! There is a man waiting for Monsieur in the hall. A seaman."

It could be no one but Dominic. It dawned upon me that since the evening
of our return I had not been near him or the ship, which was completely
unusual, unheard of, and well calculated to startle Dominic.

"I have seen him before," continued Rose, "and as he told me he has been
pursuing Monsieur all the afternoon and didn't like to go away without
seeing Monsieur for a moment, I proposed to him to wait in the hall till
Monsieur was at liberty."

I said: "Very well," and with a sudden resumption of her extremely busy,
not-a-moment-to-lose manner Rose departed from the room. I lingered in
an imaginary world full of tender light, of unheard-of colours, with a
mad riot of flowers and an inconceivable happiness under the sky arched
above its yawning precipices, while a feeling of awe enveloped me like
its own proper atmosphere. But everything vanished at the sound of Dona
Rita's loud whisper full of boundless dismay, such as to make one's hair
stir on one's head.

"_Mon Dieu_! And what is going to happen now?"

She