n resuming, however, he was not only calm, but cold; and this flying
for safety to the other extreme is the single instance of self-distrust
which the present Achates can record to the credit of his impious
AEneas.

"I called the girl Eve," said he. "Her real name was Faustina, and she
was one of a vast family who hung out in a hovel on the inland border
of the vineyard. And Aphrodite rising from the sea was less wonderful
and not more beautiful than Aphrodite emerging from that hole!

"It was the most exquisite face I ever saw or shall see in this life.
Absolutely perfect features; a skin that reminded you of old gold, so
delicate was its bronze; magnificent hair, not black but nearly; and
such eyes and teeth as would have made the fortune of a face without
another point. I tell you, Bunny, London would go mad about a girl
like that. But I don't believe there's such another in the world.
And there she was wasting her sweetness upon that lovely but desolate
little corner of it! Well, she did not waste it upon me. I would have
married her, and lived happily ever after in such a hovel as her
people's--with her. Only to look at her--only to look at her for the
rest of my days--I could have lain low and remained dead even to you!
And that's all I'm going to tell you about that, Bunny; cursed be he
who tells more! Yet don't run away with the idea that this poor
Faustina was the only woman I ever cared about. I don't believe in all
that 'only' rot; nevertheless I tell you that she was the one being who
ever entirely satisfied my sense of beauty; and I honestly believe I
could have chucked the world and been true to Faustina for that alone.

"We met sometimes in the little temple I told you about, sometimes
among the vines; now by honest accident, now by flagrant design; and
found a ready-made rendezvous, romantic as one could wish, in the cave
down all those subterranean steps. Then the sea would call us--my blue
champagne--my sparkling cobalt--and there was the dingy ready to our
hand. Oh, those nights! I never knew which I liked best, the moonlit
ones when you sculled through silver and could see for miles, or the
dark nights when the fishermen's torches stood for the sea, and a red
zig-zag in the sky for old Vesuvius. We were happy. I don't mind
owning it. We seemed not to have a care between us. My mates took no
interest in my affairs, and Faustina's family did not appear to bother
about her. The Count w