Late that night I went in search of Dominic.  That Mediterranean sailor was just the man I wanted.  He had a great experience of all unlawful things that can be done on the seas and he brought to the practice of them much wisdom and audacity.  That I didn’t know where he lived was nothing since I knew where he loved.  The proprietor of a small, quiet cafe on the quay, a certain Madame Leonore, a woman of thirty-five with an open Roman face and intelligent black eyes, had captivated his heart years ago.  In that cafe with our heads close together over a marble table, Dominic and I held an earnest and endless confabulation while Madame Leonore, rustling a black silk skirt, with gold earrings, with her raven hair elaborately dressed and something nonchalant in her movements, would take occasion, in passing to and fro, to rest her hand for a moment on Dominic’s shoulder.  Later when the little cafe had emptied itself of its habitual customers, mostly people connected with the work of ships and cargoes, she came quietly to sit at our table and looking at me very hard with her black, sparkling eyes asked Dominic familiarly what had happened to his Signorino.  It was her name for me.  I was Dominic’s Signorino.  She knew me by no other; and our connection has always been somewhat of a riddle to her.  She said that I was somehow changed since she saw me last.  In her rich voice she urged Dominic only to look at my eyes.  I must have had some piece of luck come to me either in love or at cards, she bantered.  But Dominic answered half in scorn that I was not of the sort that runs after that kind of luck.  He stated generally that there were some young gentlemen very clever in inventing new ways of getting rid of their time and their money.  However, if they needed a sensible man to help them he had no objection himself to lend a hand.  Dominic’s general scorn for the beliefs, and activities, and abilities of upper-class people covered the Principle of Legitimacy amply; but he could not resist the opportunity to exercise his special faculties in a field he knew of old.  He had been a desperate smuggler in his younger days.  We settled the purchase of a fast sailing craft.  Agreed that it must be a balancelle and something altogether out of the common.  He knew of one suitable but she was in Corsica.  Offered to start for Bastia by mail-boat in the morning.  All the time the handsome and mature Madame Leonore sat by, smiling faintly, amused at her great man joining like this in a frolic of boys.  She said the last words of that evening:  “You men never grow up,” touching lightly the grey hair above his temple.

A fortnight later.