ts hard accompaniment there rose a powerful tenor
voice singing. The song must have been struck forcibly upon some part
of his brain that was sleeping, must have summoned it to activity. For
instantly, ere the voice had sung the first verse, he saw imaginatively
a mountain top in Sicily, evening light--such as was then shining over
and transfiguring Capri--and a woman, Hermione. And he heard her voice,
very soft, with a strange depth and stillness in it, saying those words:
"He was the deathless boy."

Of course! How could he have forgotten? They had been said of Maurice
Delarey. And now idly, strangely, he had recalled them as he thought of
Ruffo's young and careless attitude by the table of the ristorante that
afternoon.

The waiter, coming presently to bring the French Signore the plate of
oysters from Fusaro, which he had ordered as the prelude to his dinner,
was surprised by the deep gravity of his face, and said:

"Don't you like 'A Mergellina,' Signore? We are all mad about it. And it
won the first prize at last year's festa of Piedigrotta."

"Comment donc?" exclaimed Artois, as if startled. "What?--no--yes. I
like it. It's a capital song. Lemon? That's right--and red pepper. Va
bene!"

And he bent over his plate rather hurriedly and began to eat.

The piano-organ and the singing voice died away down the hill, going
towards Mergellina.

But the effect, curious and surely unreasonable, of the song remained.
Often, while he ate, Artois turned his eyes towards the mountain of
Capri, and each time that he did so he saw, beyond it and its circling
sea, Sicily, Monte Amato, the dying lights on Etna, the evening star
above its plume of smoke, the figure of a woman set in the shadow of her
sorrow, yet almost terribly serene; and then another woman, sitting at a
table, vehemently talking, then bowing down her head passionately as if
in angry grief.

When he had finished his dinner the sun had set, and night had dropped
down softly over the Bay. Capri had disappeared. The long serpent of
lights had uncoiled itself along the sea. Down below, very far down,
there was the twang and the thin, acute whine of guitars and mandolines,
the throbbing cry of Southern voices. The stars were out in a deep
sky of bloomy purple. There was no chill in the air, but a voluptuous,
brooding warmth, that shed over the city and the waters a luxurious
benediction, giving absolution, surely, to all the sins, to all the
riotous follies o