The speaker started too, and gave a cry of surprise that was almost rapture. A girl, hatless, with dark hair heaped carelessly on the top of her small head, a girl with the loveliest Italian eyes Eve had ever seen, leaned forward over the gunwale, stretching out both her gloveless hands to Vansittart.
“It is you,” she cried in Italian; “I thought I should never see you again;” and then, with a quick glance at Eve, and in almost a whisper, “Is that your wife?”
“Si, Si’ora.”
The girl looked at Eve with bold unfriendly eyes, and from her looked back again to Vansittart, as his boat passed into the lock. Her manner had been so absorbing, her beauty was so startling, that it was only in this last moment that Eve recognized the man rowing as Sefton, and saw that the other two passengers were a stout middle-aged woman and a little boy, both of them dark eyed and foreign looking, like the girl.
When Eve and Vansittart looked at each other in the gloom of the lock both were deadly pale.
“Who is that girl?” she asked huskily.
“An Italian singer—Signora Vivanti. You must have heard of her; she is the rage at the Apollo.”
“But she knows you—intimately. She was enraptured at seeing you. Her whole face lighted up.”
“That is the southern manner; an organ-grinder will do as much for you if you fling him a penny.”
“How did you come to know her?”
“In Italy, years ago, before she began to be famous.”
They were out of the lock by this time, and in the broad sunshine. Eve could see that her husband’s pallor was not an illusive effect of the green gloom in that deep well they had just left.
He was white to the lips.
Sefton! Sefton and Fiordelisa hand in glove with each other! That was a perilous alliance. And Lisa’s manner, claiming him so impulsively, darting that evil look at his wife! He saw himself hemmed round with dangers, saw the menace of his domestic peace from two most formidable influences: on the one hand Lisa’s slighted love; on the other Sefton’s hatred of a successful rival. The fear of untoward complications, coming suddenly upon the happy security of his wedded life, was so absorbing that he was unconscious of Eve’s pallor and of her suppressed agitation while questioning him.
“You knew her in Italy,” said Eve, her head bent a little, one listless hand dabbling in the sunlit water that reflected the vivid colouring of the boat in gleams of lapis and malachite. “In what part of Italy? Tell me all about her. I am dying of curiosity. There was such odious familiarity in her manner.”
“Again I must refer you to any organ-grinder as an example of southern exuberance.”
“Yes, yes, that is all very fine, but Signora Vivanti must belong to a higher grade than the organ-grinder. She is not to be judged by his standard.”
“There you are wrong. She is of peasant birth.”
“Indeed. She certainly looks common; beautiful, but essentially common. Well, Jack, where and when did you meet her?”
“Years ago, as I told you. Where?” hesitatingly, as if trying to fix a vague memory, while lurid before his mental vision there rose the scene at Florian’s, the lights, the crowd, the Babel of music from brass and strings, mandoline and flute, every stone of the city resonant with varied melodies. “Where?” he repeated, seeing her looking at him impatiently. “Why, I think it was in Verona.”
“You think. She had a very distinct memory of meeting you, at any rate”—with a little scornful laugh. “If you were her bosom friend her greeting could not have been warmer.”
“Mere Celtic impulsiveness. One meets with as much warmth in the south of Ireland. Hotel waiters have the air of clansmen, who would shed their blood for us. Hotel acquaintances seem as old friends.”
“How did you come to know this girl—peasant born, as you say?”
“She was in a factory, and I was going over the factory, and I talked to her, and she told me her troubles, and I was interested and—The same sort of thing happens a dozen times on a Continental tour. You don’t want chapter and verse, I hope. That memory is immeshed in a tangle of other memories. I should only deceive you if I went into particulars.”
He had recovered himself by this time, and the colour had come slowly back to his face. Eve sat dumbly watching him as he bent over the sculls, rowing faster than he need have done, much faster than on the other side of the lock. He was ready to lie with an appalling recklessness if he could by so doing set up a barrier of falsehood between his wife and the true story of that night in Venice. He looked at her presently, and saw that she was troubled. He smiled, but there was no answering smile.
“My darling, you are not by way of being jealous, I hope,” he said gaily. “You are not unhappy because a peasant girl held out her hands to me.”
“Signora Vivanti has been long enough in England to know that a woman does not behave in that way to an almost stranger,” said Eve. “Why did you look frightened at the sound of her voice when the boat came out of the lock? Why did you turn pale when she spoke to you?”
“Did I really turn pale? I suppose I was a little scared at her demonstrative address, fearing lest it should offend you. One has time to think of so
