the gray of a rain-washed, windy morning had come, and Naples
had put off its merry sinning, changing from a city of pleasure to a
city of labour and, too often, of callously inflicted pain, did Helen
de Vallorbes leave the cedar-scented library. The fire of logs had
burnt itself out upon the hearth, and other fires, perhaps, had pretty
thoroughly burnt themselves out likewise. Then, with the extinguished
lamp in one hand and her high-heeled, cloth-of-gold slippers in the
other, she had run swiftly, barefoot, up the cold, marble stairs,
through the suite of lofty rooms, her image, in the bleak dimness of
the wet morning, given back by their tall mirrors as that of no mortal
woman but some fear-driven, hurrying ghost. Carefully closing the door
of the bedchamber behind her, she threw her dressing-gown aside and
buried herself in the luxurious softness of the unslept-in bed. And she
was only just in time. Servants began to move to and fro. The house was
awake.

CHAPTER X

THE ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION

Sullenly, persistently, the rain came down. In the harbour the wash was
just sufficient to make the raveled fruit-baskets, the shredded
vegetables, the crusts and offal thrown out from the galleys, heave and
sway upon the oily surface of the water, while screaming gulls dropped
greedily upon the floating refuse, and rising, circled over the black,
liquid lanes and open spaces between the hulls of the many ships. But
it was insufficient to lift the yacht, tied up to the southern quay of
the Porto Grande. She lay there inert and in somewhat sorry plight
under the steady downpour. For the moment all the winsome devilry of a
smart, sea-going craft was dead in her, and she sulked, ashamed through
all her eight hundred tons of wood and iron, copper, brass, and steel.
For she was coaling, over-deck, and was grimy from stem to stern.
While, arrayed in the cast clothes of all Europe, tattered, undersized,
gesticulating, the human scum of Naples swarmed up the steep, narrow
planks from the inky lighters and in over her side.

"Beastly dirty job this. Shan't get her paint clean under a week!" the
first mate grumbled to his companion, the second mate--a dark-haired,
dreamy-eyed, West-country lad, but just out of his teens.

The two officers, in dripping oilskins, stood at the gangway checking
the tally of coal-baskets as they came on board. Just now there was a
pause in the black procession, as an empty lighter sheered off