orld, for all that is real, that does not suffer corruption,
disintegration! How adorable is Time where Time is powerless!"

"Is Time ever powerless?" she said. "Ah, here is Vere!"

They dined outside upon the terrace facing Vesuvius. Artois sat between
mother and child. Vere was very quiet. Her excitement, her almost
feverish gayety of the evening of the storm had vanished. To-night
dreams hung in her eyes. And the sea was quiet as she was, repentant
surely of its former furies. There seemed something humble, something
pleading in its murmur, as if it asked forgiveness and promised
amendment.

The talk was chiefly between Hermione and Artois. It was not very
animated. Perhaps the wide peace of the evening influenced their minds.
When coffee was carried out Artois lit his pipe, and fell into
complete silence, watching the sea. Giulia brought to Hermione a bit
of embroidery on which she was working, cleared away the dessert and
quietly disappeared. From the house now and then came a sound of voices,
of laughter. It died away, and the calm of the coming night, the calm
of the silent trio that faced it, seemed to deepen as if in delicate
protest against the interference. The stillness of Nature to-night was
very natural. But was the human stillness natural? Presently Artois,
suddenly roused, he knew not why, to self-consciousness, found himself
wondering. Vere lay back in her wicker chair like one at ease. Hermione
was leaning forward over her work with her eyes bent steadily upon it.
Far off across the sea the smoke from the summit of Vesuvius was dyed at
regular intervals by the red fire that issued from the entrails of
the mountain. Silently it rose from its hidden world, glowed angrily,
menacingly, faded, then glowed again. And the life that is in fire, and
that seems to some the most intense of all the forces of life, stirred
Artois from his peace. The pulse of the mountain, whose regular beating
was surely indicated by the regularly recurring glow of the rising
flame, seemed for a moment to be sounding in his ears, and, with it, all
the pulses that were beating through the world. And he thought of the
calm of their bodies, of Hermione's, of Vere's, of his own, as he had
thought of the calm of the steely sky, the steely sea, that had preceded
the bursting of the storm that came from Ischia. He thought of it as
something unnatural, something almost menacing, a sort of combined lie
that strove to conceal, to deny, the