The _Fretta_ rushed straight towards the sunset, like some little water-creature magnetised by light. On either side of the wheel, opposite each other, Sophy and Amaldi sat gazing at the gorgeous, cloud-suffused sky. They had both thrown aside their hats. His face had a new, boyish look with his hair blown back by the wind. It was still so warm in the mellow glow from the sunset, that he had also taken off his coat. Sophy liked his slight figure freed of the dark-blue coat. It, too, looked boyish somehow. This pleased her. Sometimes his grave stillness almost made her nervous. There seemed to be so much at work under the smooth surface. She thought that he was rather like a still, dark, mountain pool. One saw reflections so clearly--but never what was really in the depths of the pool.

But now some quickening change had come over him and his face looked eager, joyous--the face of one who could be a delightful companion. His eyes seemed to have dismissed more serious thoughts.

The sun, with disk hidden behind a ma.s.s of purple cloud, sent forth vast spokes of light on every side; and this immense, fiery wheel, whose axle was the hidden sun, whose tyre the extreme round of pale blue air, made Sophy cry out:

"There 'tarry the wheels of his chariot'! Apollo's revealing himself to me because I'm a good Pagan!"

"_Are_ you a 'good Pagan'?" said Amaldi, smiling. "Then you shouldn't have dealings with the priesthood that have stolen his rays to set round the vessel sacred to another G.o.d."

She shook her head at him, smiling, too.

"No, no. I won't let you quarrel with me to-day. It has all been too beautiful."

"I couldn't quarrel with you," he said, "even if you let me--even if you insisted on keeping a pet priest. Or, yes--then I might be tempted to 'quarrel'--though I'd have no right to."

"Friendship gives rights. We agreed to be friends long ago--in England,"

answered Sophy happily.

Then she looked again at the golden wheel that filled the west.

"The clouds are beautiful--but do you think they mean rain?" she asked rather anxiously.

"So our peasants say," replied Amaldi. "They have a rhyme that goes: '_Sol che varda in dree, Acqua ai pe_'-'A sun that peeps backward, water over the feet.'"

"Oh, I love this dialect. Would it be _very_ hard to learn?"

"But you should learn Italian, not dialect," he said, smiling.

"I should like to know both. I'd love to talk to the people in their own language. Is that very hard to do? Steering, I mean. May I try?"

He showed her how the wheel worked, indicating a white house far away as a point for her to steer by.

"Oh, how nice! How well she answers--like a little water-horse to a bridle!"

She was charmed to feel how the _Fretta_ glided this way or that at the lightest touch. They had now reached a part of the Lake, near Santa Catterina, where at this hour there is no faintest stir of air. The water spread beneath them so still, so clear, that it was almost as if they were rushing through a golden vacuum. Only the arrowy silver of the _Fretta_'s bow-waves showed that the element through which they fled was water and not air.

Suddenly the Intragnola--the land breeze that blows from sh.o.r.e near Intra--met them full. The sky was fast fading.

"Hadn't you better let me get you that cloak?" said Amaldi. As she turned to let him put his mother's cloak about her shoulders, his heart flashed hot on a sudden. Just so might he be folding a wrap of his mother's about her--if she were his wife. It seemed subtly, wildly sweet to him to see her nestling there in that cloak so intimately a.s.sociated with his mother--with his daily, familiar life.

"She is so sweet--your mother," said Sophy, looking down at the warm folds. "It was dear of her to think of lending me this cloak. I almost envy you your mother."

"And--yours?" asked Amaldi softly.

"She died when I was a young girl."

"That is very sad," said Amaldi, but the tone of his voice was better than the most florid words of sympathy.

All at once Sophy started. She had given him back the steering-wheel some time ago. She clasped her hands under the folds of the grey cloak.

"Marchese! Your dinner! How will you get your dinner!" she cried regretfully. "I am so selfish--I had forgotten all about your dinner!

There will be nothing--nothing at all for you to eat at--at my villa. I told Luigi not to order dinner--just to have some milk and bread and fruit for me."

Amaldi rea.s.sured her, smiling.

"There are dozens of places where I can dine capitally," he said. "The 'Isola Pescatori'--just ahead of us to the left there--that is a delightful place to dine. You must go there with us--Baldi and me--some time---- That is, if you'd care to----"

"Oh, I should--of course. But I can't think of anything now but that you'll be hours late for your dinner. It's so far yet to Ghiffa."

"We shall be there in half an hour--easily," he consoled her. He glanced at his watch. "It's not yet half-past seven."

But Sophy felt very worried. She was essentially the old-fashioned woman where the regularity of masculine meals was concerned. In regard to food, men impressed her as machines that would run down or collapse altogether unless stoked, so to speak, at exact intervals. Women were flightier, more happy-go-lucky creatures, when the solemnities of eating were in question. She had been thoroughly grounded in this conception of the matter by her husband. Amaldi guessed as much.

"My dear lady, if only you could know how often I make a meal off of rye bread and cheese; when I'm out for a day's sailing," he said. "Really my dinner hasn't the gigantic importance for me that your kindness imagines."

He spoke rather stilted English sometimes when he was serious as now, but Sophy loved it, because he was trying to make her feel less self-reproachful.

"It's very, very good of you, Marchese, to want to make me feel less dreadfully selfish," she now said. "But"--her tone was mournful--"these hours on the water have made _me_ dreadfully hungry--so I can imagine what _you_ are feeling!"

Amaldi laughed. At the same instant he had a veritable inspiration. Her remark in reference to the servants showed him how far she was from any conventional pruderies.

"I'll tell you what we can do--if you approve," he said. "The Isola Pescatori is just over there to our left. Do you see? Where the lights cl.u.s.ter in a little bunch there? We could land there and have an excellent dinner."

"Oh, what fun! I should love it!" she cried, without an instant's hesitation.

"_Benone! Benissimo!_" he said, lapsing into Italian as he always did when excited or deeply moved.

It was now after eight. The purplish dusk was velvet overhead, and silken smooth below. Stresa to the left, and Pallanza far away to the northeast, fretted the twilight with points of orange. Between the scudding clouds stars flitted in and out like fireflies. There was the soft, orange glow from a rising moon behind the Sa.s.so di Perro. Its huge crouching bulk seemed steaming with phosphorus.

Now they were under the lee of the little island. Sophy saw the cl.u.s.tered houses jutting above her, and a wide terrace, brightly lighted, under its pergola of grape-vines. People were eating there at little tables. She could see their heads above the wall. They had dined already, for it was fruit and nuts that they were lifting to their mouths. It seemed droll to see these greedy heads peeping above the terrace.

They got out on the rough, stone quay, and climbing a stairway found themselves on the terrace. It was very gay, with electric lights hung from the lattice of the pergola. Half the terrace was uncovered. Sophy hoped that they would sit at one of the tables out there under the violet-blue, star-freckled sky. The Padrone came forward, followed by one of his daughters. He was a much travelled man--had been a head waiter in Vienna, London, New York. The daughter had a sweet, long, pensive face under a big black pompadour.

He greeted Amaldi with respectful effusion. How well the Marchese looked! He had not seen the Marchese for some years, but truly the Marchese seemed to grow younger. And was this the Marchese's Signora Marchesa? He had the honour to felicitate----

"Babbo! _Babbo!_" whispered the daughter. She had caught hold of her parent's coat. She gave it two agitated but peremptory jerks as she spoke. Her "Babbo" had been so long away from home that he did not realise that the young Marchese's "Signora" was most unlikely to be with him. The Padrone retreated backwards, saying, "Prego! Prego!"

confusedly.

They chose a table close to the edge of the terrace, near a big terra-cotta vase filled with scarlet geraniums. The blood-red blossoms, gleaming with electric light, stood out against the violet dusk. All Italy was in these flowers burning against the night sky.

The meal that followed was veiled with poetry for them both. For Amaldi because he loved her; for Sophy because she loved Italy. They were also very hungry, and it is odd how it increases sympathy for two young and hungry people to eat together. Sophy felt that she had known Amaldi a long time when they rose from the little iron table on the terrace of Isola Pescatori.

They went for a stroll through the crooked streets. As they pa.s.sed the Village Church--Sophy hesitated, then entered. He followed and they stood side by side, glancing about them. Three peasant women and a man were kneeling on the dark benches. The women glanced up at the _forestieri_, frankly curious; only the man kept his anxious, faded blue eyes on the image of the Virgin, that, life-sized and brightly tinted, held out compa.s.sionate hands towards the suppliant. His lips moved rapidly, without ceasing. Sophy imagined that he was pleading for the life of some one dear to him--a little child maybe. She just touched Amaldi's arm, and they went out again.

"I'm afraid it jarred on you--my going in there," she said softly, looking up into his face in the gloom of the narrow street. "But the places where the poor worship always draw me--they seem so real--I can't explain--but they move me--deeply."

"I understand," said Amaldi. "It is so with me, too."