Then he put Thomas away in his warm corner
of the cart, and Livio joined him, and they had supper together at a
_trattoria_, and then climbed the road between vineyards and lemon
gardens up to the new white hotel.

Livio, as they walked, practised his repertory of songs, singing
melodious snatches in the lemon-scented dusk. They came to the hotel, and
found that the inhabitants were sitting round little tables in the dim
garden, having their coffee by the light of hanging lanterns.

From out of the dusk Livio struck his mandolin and sweetly sang. Peter
meanwhile wandered round from group to group displaying his wares by
the pink light of the lanterns. He met with some success; he really
embroidered rather nicely, and people were good-natured and kind to the
pale-faced, delicate-looking young man who smiled with his very blue,
friendly eyes. There was always an element in Peter that inspired pity;
one divined in him a merry unfortunate.

The people in the hotel were of many races--French, Italian, German, and
one English family. Castoleto is not an Anglo-Saxon resort; it is small
and of no reputation, and not as yet Anglicised. Probably the one English
family in the hotel was motoring down the coast, and only staying for one
night.

Peter, in his course round the garden, came suddenly within earshot of
cultured English voices, and heard some one laugh. Then a voice, soft in
quality, with casual, pleasant, unemphasised cadence, said, "Considering
these vile roads, she's running extraordinarily well. Really, something
ought to be done about the roads, though; it's absolutely disgraceful.
Blake says ..." one of the things that chauffeurs do say, and that
Peter did not listen to.

Peter had stopped suddenly where he was when the speaker had laughed. Of
the many personal attributes of man, some may become slurred out of all
character, disguised and levelled down among the herd, blurred with time,
robbed of individuality. Faces may be so lost and blurred, almost beyond
the recognition of those who have loved them. But who ever forgot a
friend's laugh, or lost the character of his own? If Ulysses had laughed
when he came back to Ithaca, his dog would have missed his eternal
distinction.

Soft, rather low, a thing not detached from the sentence it broke into,
but rather breaking out of it, and merging then into words again--Peter
had carried it in his ears for ten years. Was there ever any man but one
who laughed quite so