the next words, expecting that they would torture
him. There was a long pause, however, and what he awaited did not come.

"Do you hate the name Miriam, as I do?"

"Hate it, no."

"I wonder they didn't call her Keziah, and me Mephibosheth. It isn't a
nice thing to detest the memory of one's parents, Mallard. It doesn't
help to make one a well-balanced man. How on earth did I get my
individuality? And you mustn't think that Miriam is just what she
seems--I mean, there _are_ possibilities in her; I am convinced of it."

"Did it ever occur to you that your own proceedings may have acted as a
check upon those possibilities?"

"I don't know that I ever thought of it," said Elgar, ingenuously.

"You never reflected that her notion of the liberated man is yourself?"

"You are right, Mallard. I see it. What other example had she?"

They walked as far as Massa Lubrense, a little town on the steep shore;
over against it the giant cliffs of Capri, every cleft and scar and
jutting rock discernible through the pellucid air, every minutest
ruggedness casting its clear-cut shadow. But the surpassing glory was
the prospect at the Cape of Sorrento when they reached it on their walk
back. Before them the entire sweep of the gulf, from Ischia to Capri;
Naples in its utmost extent, an unbroken line of delicate pink, from
Posillipo to Torre Annunziata. Far below their feet the little _marina_
of Sorrento, with its row of boats drawn up on the strand; behind them
noble limestone heights. The sea was foaming under the tramontana, and
its foam took colour from the declining sun.

Next morning they set forth again as Mallard had proposed, their
baggage packed on a donkey, a guide with them to lead the way over the
mountains to the other shore. A long climb, and at the culminating
point of the ridge they rested to look the last on Naples;
thenceforward their faces were set to the far blue hills of Calabria.

"Yonder lies Paestum," said Mallard, pointing to the dim plain beyond
the Gulf of Salerno; and his companion's eyes were agleam.

Early in the afternoon they reached the coast at Positano, and thence
took boat for Amalfi. Elgar was like one possessed at his first sight
of the wonderful old town, nested in its mountain gorge, overlooked by
wild crags; this relic saved from the waste of mediaeval glory. When
they had put up at an inn less frequented and much cheaper than the
"Cappuccini," he would not rest until he had used the last