the
fire on the night of the dinner in Soho she had said nothing about his
coming again. And he had not mentioned it. But she had felt then that
to speak of such a thing was quite unnecessary, that it was tacitly
understood between them that of course he would come again, and
soon. And she believed that he had felt as she did. For despite her
self-mockery, and even now when looking back, she had known, and still
knew, that they had gone quite a long way together in a very short time.

That happens sometimes; but perhaps very seldom when one of the
travellers is sixty and the other some thirty years younger. Surely
something peculiar in Craven rather than something unusual in herself
had been at the root of the whole thing.

That night he had seemed so oddly at home in her house, and really he
had seemed so happy and at ease. They had talked about Italy, and he
had told her what Italy meant to him, quite simply and without any pose,
forgetting to be self-conscious in the English way. He had passed a
whole summer on the bay of Naples, and he had told her all about it. And
in the telling he had revealed a good deal of himself. The prelude in
Soho had no doubt prepared the way for such talk by carrying them to
Naples on wings of music. They would not have talked just like that
after a banal dinner at Claridge's or the Carlton. Craven had shown the
enthusiasm that was in him for the sun, the sea, life let loose from
convention, nature and beautiful things. The Foreign Office young
man--quiet, reserved, and rather older than his years--had been pushed
aside by a youth who had some Pagan blood in him, who had some agreeable
wildness under the smooth surface which often covers only other layers
of smoothness. He had told her of his envy of the sea people and she had
understood it; and, in return, she had told him of an American boy whom
she had known long ago, and who, fired by a book about life on the bay
of Naples which he had read in San Francisco, had got hold of a little
money, taken ship to Naples, gone straight to the point at Posilpipo,
and stayed there among the fishermen for nearly two years, living their
life, eating their food, learning to speak their argot, becoming at
length as one of them. So thoroughly indeed had he identified himself
with them that often he had acted as boatman to English and American
tourists, and never had his nationality been discovered. In the end, of
course, he had gone back to San Franci