that she did so much long to be let alone. If only, only she
could be left quite quiet for this one month, she felt that she might
perhaps make something of herself after all.

She kept her eyes shut, because then he would think she wanted to
sleep and would go away.

Domenico's romantic Italian soul melted within him at the sight,
for having her eyes shut was extraordinarily becoming to her. He stood
entranced, quite still, and she thought he had stolen away, so she
opened them again.

No; there he was, staring at her. Even he. There was no getting
away from being stared at.

"I have a headache," she said, shutting them again.

"It is the sun," said Domenico, "and sitting on the wall without
a hat."

"I wish to sleep."

"Si signorina," he said sympathetically; and went softly away.

She opened her eyes with a sigh of relief. The gentle closing of
the glass doors showed her that he had not only gone quite away but had
shut her out in the garden so that she should be undisturbed. Now
perhaps she would be alone till lunch-time.

It was very curious, and no one in the world could have been more
surprised than she herself, but she wanted to think. She had never
wanted to do that before. Everything else that it is possible to do
without too much inconvenience she had either wanted to do or had done
at one period or another of her life, but not before had she wanted to
think. She had come to San Salvatore with the single intention of
lying comatose for four weeks in the sun, somewhere where her parents
and friends were not, lapped in forgetfulness, stirring herself only to
be fed, and she had not been there more than a few hours when this
strange new desire took hold of her.

There had been wonderful stars the evening before, and she had
gone out into the top garden after dinner, leaving Mrs. Fisher alone
over her nuts and wine, and, sitting on the wall at the place where the
lilies crowded their ghost heads, she had looked out into the gulf of
the night, and it had suddenly seemed as if her life had been a noise
all about nothing.

She had been intensely surprised. She knew stars and darkness
did produce unusual emotions because, in others, she had seen them
being produced, but they had not before done it in herself. A noise
all about nothing. Could she be quite well? She had wondered. For a
long while past she had been aware that her life was a noise, but it
had seemed to be very much about som