It was rather green and salad, but as soon as his hands
were warm he determined to put this idea into immediate use. The Voice
had stirred him deeply, stirred him with the longing to hear it again,
to see the singer's face, to learn what extraordinary impulse had loosed
the song. Perhaps it was his unspoken loneliness striving to call out
against this self-imposed isolation; for he was secretly lonely, as all
bachelors must be who have passed the Rubicon of thirty. He made no
analysis of this new desire, or rather this old desire, newly awakened.
He embraced it gratefully. Such is the mystery and power of the human
voice: this one, passing casually under his window, had awakened him.

Never the winter came with its weary round of rain and fog and snow that
his heart and mind did not fly over the tideless southern sea to the
land of his birth if not of his blood. Sorrento, that jewel of the ruddy
clifts! There was fog outside his window, and yet how easy it was to
picture the turquoise bay of Naples shimmering in the morning light!
There was Naples itself, like a string of its own pink coral, lying
crescent-wise on the distant strand; there were the snowcaps fading on
the far horizon; the bronzed fishermen and their wives, a sheer two
hundred feet below him, pulling in their glistening nets; the amethyst
isles of Capri and Ischia eternally hanging midway between the blue of
the sky and the blue of the sea; and there, towering menacingly above
all this melting beauty, the dark, grim pipe of Vulcan. How easily,
indeed, he could see all these things!

With a quick gesture of both hands, Latin, always Latin, he crossed the
room to a small writing-desk, turned on the lights and sat down. He
smiled as he took up the pen to begin his composition. Not one chance in
a thousand. And after several attempts he realized that the letter he
had in mind was not the simplest to compose. There were a dozen futile
efforts before he produced anything like satisfaction. Then he filled
out a small check. A little later he stole down-stairs, round the corner
to the local branch of the post-office, and returned. It was only a
blind throw, such as dicers sometimes make in the dark. But chance loves
her true gamester, and to him she makes a faithful servant.

"I should be sorely tempted," he mused, picking up a novel and selecting
a comfortable angle in the Morris, "I should be sorely tempted to call
any other man a silly ass. Leddy Lightfinger-