ower depths of buffeting
dripping darkness, till he found his hand on the gate-latch and swung to
the black lane below the wall. Thence on a run he wound to the tanners'
quarter by the river: a district commonly as foul-tongued as it was
ill-favoured, but tonight clean-purged of both evils by the vehement
sweep of the storm. Here he groped his way among slippery places and
past huddled out-buildings to the piles of the wharf. The rain was now
subdued to a noiseless vertical descent, through which he could hear the
tap of the river against the piles. Scarce knowing what he fled or
whither he was flying, he let himself down the steps and found the flat
of a boat's bottom underfoot. A boatman, distinguishable only as a black
bulk in the stern, steadied his descent with outstretched hand; then the
bow swung round, and after a labouring stroke or two they caught the
current and were swept down through the rushing darkness.

BOOK III.

THE CHOICE.

The Vision touched him on the lips and said:
Hereafter thou shalt eat me in thy bread,
Drink me in all thy kisses, feel my hand
Steal 'twixt thy palm and Joy's, and see me stand
Watchful at every crossing of the ways,
The insatiate lover of thy nights and days.

3.1.

It was at Naples, some two years later, that the circumstances of his
flight were recalled to Odo Valsecca by the sound of a voice which at
once mysteriously connected itself with the incidents of that wild
night.

He was seated with a party of gentlemen in the saloon of Sir William
Hamilton's famous villa of Posilipo, where they were sipping the
ambassador's iced sherbet and examining certain engraved gems and
burial-urns recently taken from the excavations. The scene was such as
always appealed to Odo's fancy: the spacious room, luxuriously fitted
with carpets and curtains in the English style, and opening on a
prospect of classical beauty and antique renown; in his hands the rarest
specimens of that buried art which, like some belated golden harvest,
was now everywhere thrusting itself through the Neapolitan soil; and
about him men of taste and understanding, discussing the historic or
mythological meaning of the objects before them, and quoting Homer or
Horace in corroboration of their guesses.

Several visitors had joined the party since Odo's entrance; and it was
from a group of these later arrivals that the voice had reached him. He
looked round and saw a man of refine