procession of celebrated names introduced by the
Padrone. Vere was secretly strung up, had been strung up even before she
stepped into the launch. She felt very happy, but in her happiness there
was something feverish, which was not customary to any mood of hers. She
never drank wine, and had taken none to-night, yet as the evening wore
on she was conscious of an effervescence, as if her brain were full of
winking bubbles such as rise to the surface of champagne.

Her imagination was almost furiously alive, and as the Padrone talked,
waving his hands and striking postures like those of a military
dictator, she saw the dead Empress, with her fan before her face,
nodding her head to the jig of "Funiculi, funicula," while she watched
the red cloud from Vesuvius rising into the starry sky; she saw Sarah
Bernhardt taking the Greek cat upon her knee; the newly made Czar
reading the telegram with his glass of punch beside him; Tosti tracing
lines of music; Gladstone watching the sea; and finally the gaunt figure
and the long beard of Tolstoy bending over the book in which he wrote
clearly so many years ago, "Vedi Napoli e poi mori."

"Monsieur Emile, you must write in the wonderful book of Frisio's," she
exclaimed.

"We will all write, Signorina!" cried the Marchesino. "Bring the book,
Signor Masella!"

The Padrone hastened away to fetch it, but Vere shook her head.

"No, no, we must not write! We are nobodies. Monsieur Emile is a great
man. Only he is worthy of such a book. Isn't it so, Madre?"

Artois felt the color rising to his face at this unexpected remark of
the girl. He had been distrait during the dinner, certainly neither
brilliant nor amusing, despite his efforts to seem talkative and
cheerful. A depression had weighed upon him, as it had weighed upon him
in the launch during the voyage from the island. He had felt as if he
were apart, even almost as if he were _de trop_. Had Vere noticed it?
Was that the reason of this sudden and charming demonstration in his
favor?

He looked across at her, longing to know. But she was arguing gayly with
the Marchesino, who continued to insist that they must all write their
names as a souvenir of the occasion.

"We are nobodies," she repeated.

"You dare to say that you are a nobody!" exclaimed the young man,
looking at her with ardent eyes. "Ah, Signorina, you do wrong to drink
no wine. In wine there is truth, they say. But you--you drink water,
and then you say these