ow childish his Padroncina still was. And,
at that moment, Vere did not think of Ruffo. She wondered a little what
Gaspare was thinking. That there was some special thought behind his
words, prompting them, she knew. But she did not ask him what it was,
for already they were at the islet, and she must run in, and put on her
clothes. Gaspare put her cloak carefully over her shoulders, and she
hurried lightly up the steps and into her room. Her mother was not in
the house. She had gone to Naples that day to see some poor people
in whom she was interested. So Vere was alone. She took off her
bathing-dress, and began to put on her things rather slowly. Her whole
body was deliciously lulled by its long contact with the sea. She felt
gloriously calm and gloriously healthy just then, but her mind was
working vigorously though quietly.

A woman! The word sounded a little solemn and heavy, and, somehow,
dreadfully respectable. And she thought of her recent behavior in the
Grotto, and laughed aloud. She was so very slim, too. The word woman
suggested to her some one more bulky than she was. But all that was
absurd, of course. She was thinking very frivolously to-day.

She put on her dress and fastened it. At the age of sixteen she had put
up her hair, but now it was still wet, and she had left it streaming
over her shoulders. In a moment she was going out onto the cliff to let
the sun dry it thoroughly. The sun was so much better than any towel.
With her hair down she really looked like a child, whatever Gaspare
thought. She said that to herself, standing for a moment before the
glass. Vere was almost as divinely free from self-consciousness as her
father had been. But the conversation in the boat had made her think of
herself very seriously, and now she considered herself, not without keen
interest.

"I am certainly not a wicked baby," she said to herself. "But I don't
think I look at all like a woman."

Her dark eyes met the eyes in the glass and smiled.

"And yet I shall be seventeen quite soon. What can have made Gaspare
talk like that to Madre? I wonder what he said exactly. And then that
about 'women cannot talk to everybody as children can.' Now what--?"

Ruffo came into her mind.

"Ah!" she said, aloud.

The figure in the glass made a little gesture. It threw up its hand.

"That's it! That's it! Gaspare thinks--"

"Signorina! Signorina!"

Gaspare's voice was speaking outside the door. And now there came a
fi