“No, that’s for the waking hours,” Dominic drawled, basking sleepily with his head between his hands in her ardent gaze. “The waking hours are longer.”
“They must be, at sea,” she said, never taking her eyes off him. “But I suppose you do talk of your loves sometimes.”
“You may be sure, Madame Leonore,” I interjected, noticing the hoarseness of my voice, “that you at any rate are talked about a lot at sea.”
“I am not so sure of that now. There is that strange lady from the Prado that you took him to see, Signorino. She went to his head like a glass of wine into a tender youngster’s. He is such a child, and I suppose that I am another. Shame to confess it, the other morning I got a friend to look after the cafe for a couple of hours, wrapped up my head, and walked out there to the other end of the town. . . . Look at these two sitting up! And I thought they were so sleepy and tired, the poor fellows!”
She kept our curiosity in suspense for a moment.
“Well, I have seen your marvel, Dominic,” she continued in a calm voice. “She came flying out of the gate on horseback and it would have been all I would have seen of her if—and this is for you, Signorino—if she hadn’t pulled up in the main alley to wait for a very good-looking cavalier. He had his moustaches so, and his teeth were very white when he smiled at her. But his eyes are too deep in his head for my taste. I didn’t like it. It reminded me of a certain very severe priest who used to come to our village when I was young; younger even than your marvel, Dominic.”
“It was no priest in disguise, Madame Leonore,” I said, amused by her expression of disgust. “That’s an American.”
“Ah!
“What! Walked to the other end of the town to see Dona Rita!” Dominic addressed her in a low bantering tone. “Why, you were always telling me you couldn’t walk further than the end of the quay to save your life—or even mine, you said.”
“Well, I did; and I walked back again and between the two walks I had a good look. And you may be sure— that will surprise you both—that on the way back—oh, Santa Madre, wasn’t it a long way, too—I wasn’t thinking of any man at sea or on shore in that connection.”
“No. And you were not thinking of yourself, either, I suppose,” I said. Speaking was a matter of great effort for me, whether I was too tired or too sleepy, I can’t tell. “No, you were not thinking of yourself. You were thinking of a woman, though.”
“
“A man’s hat on her head,” remarked with profound displeasure Dominic, to whom this wonder, at least, of all the wonders of the earth, was apparently unknown.
“
“And now you know,” Dominic growled softly, with his head still between his hands.
She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only sighed lightly.
“And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be haunted by her face?” I asked.
I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh. For she seemed only to be thinking of herself and looked not in my direction. But suddenly she roused up.
“Of her?” she repeated in a louder voice. “Why should I talk of another woman? And then she is a great lady.”
At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once.
“Isn’t she? Well, no, perhaps she isn’t; but you may be sure of one thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more than any one that I have seen. Keep that well in your mind: She is for no man! She would be vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held.”
I caught my breath. “Inconstant,” I whispered.
“I don’t say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full of pity. Signorino, you don’t know much about women. And you may learn something yet or you may not; but what you learn from her you will never forget.”
“Not to be held,” I murmured; and she whom the quayside called Madame Leonore closed her outstretched hand before my face and opened it at once to show its emptiness in illustration of her expressed opinion. Dominic never moved.
I wished good-night to these two and left the cafe for the fresh air and the dark spaciousness of the quays augmented by all the width of the old Port where between the trails of light the shadows of heavy hulls appeared very black, merging their outlines in a great confusion. I left behind me the end of the Cannebiere, a wide vista of tall houses and much-lighted pavements losing itself in the distance with an extinction of both shapes and lights. I slunk past it with only a side glance and sought the dimness of quiet streets away from the centre of the usual night gaieties of the town. The dress I wore was just that of a sailor come ashore from some coaster, a thick blue woollen shirt or rather a sort of jumper with a knitted cap like a tam-o’-shanter worn very much on one side and with a red tuft of wool in the centre. This was even the reason why I had lingered so long in the cafe. I didn’t want