gued faces, and they both had big
eyes, fatigued eyes. They were beautiful ladies, he thought, and their
eyes, looking at him over the tops of the suit-cases watching his every
movement--there were no trunks, only numbers of suit-cases--were like
the eyes of the Mother of God. The only thing the ladies said, and
they repeated it at regular intervals, even after they had started,
gently prodding him as he sat on his box to call his attention to it,
was, "San Salvatore?"

And each time he answered vociferously, encouragingly, "Si, si--
San Salvatore."

"We don't know of course if he's taking us there," said Mrs.
Arbuthnot at last in a low voice, after they had been driving as it
seemed to them a long while, and had got off the paving-stones of the
sleep-shrouded town and were out on a winding road with what they could
just see was a low wall on their left beyond which was a great black
emptiness and the sound of the sea. On their right was something close
and steep and high and black--rocks, they whispered to each other; huge
rocks.

They felt very uncomfortable. It was so late. It was so dark.
The road was so lonely. Suppose a wheel came off. Suppose they met
Fascisti, or the opposite of Fascisti. How sorry they were now that
they had not slept at Genoa and come on the next morning in daylight.

"But that would have been the first of April," said Mrs. Wilkins,
in a low voice.

"It is that now," said Mrs. Arbuthnot beneath her breath.

"So it is," murmured Mrs. Wilkins.

They were silent.

Beppo turned round on his box--a disquieting habit already
noticed, for surely his horse ought to be carefully watched--and again
addressed them with what he was convinced was lucidity--no patois, and
the clearest explanatory movements.

How much they wished their mothers had made them learn Italian
when they were little. If only now they could have said, "Please sit
round the right way and look after the horse." They did not even know
what horse was in Italian. It was contemptible to be so ignorant.

In their anxiety, for the road twisted round great jutting rocks,
and on their left was only the low wall to keep them out of the sea
should anything happen, they too began to gesticulate, waving their
hands at Beppo, pointing ahead. They wanted him to turn round again and
face his horse, that was all. He thought they wanted him to drive
faster; and there followed a terrifying ten minutes during which, as he
supp