“But you must not keep him long.  See how much he has done in Italy!  You will see he must come back again.”

“Monsieur” had been for his statue, and was to send for it the next day, more than satisfied with it.

Harry was astonished.

“Five hundred dollars!  It would take me long enough to work that out!  Ah, Ernest, your hammering is worth more than mine!”

Harry’s surprise was not merely for the money earned.  When he saw the white marble figure, which brought into the poor room where it stood grandeur and riches and life and grace, he wondered still more.

“I see now,” he said.  “You spent your life on this.  No wonder you were starving when your spirit was putting itself into this mould!”

Harry was in a hurry to return.  Ernest’s little affairs were quickly settled.  Harry was surprised to find Italian life was so like home life in this one thing:  he had been treated so kindly, just as he would have been in his own home,—­just as Mrs. Schroder, and even Aunt Martha, would have treated a poor Italian stranger who had sought a lodging in their house; they had welcomed Harry with the same warmth and feeling with which they had all along cared for Ernest.  This was something that Harry knew how to translate.

“When we were boys,” he said to Ernest, as they set out to return, “and you used to talk about Europe, we little thought I should travel into it so carelessly as I did when I came here.  I crossed it much as a pair of compasses would on the map:  my only points of rest were the home I left and the one I was reaching for.”

Much in the same way they passed through it again.  Harry spoke of and observed outward things, but everything showed that it was but a superficial observation.  His thoughts were with Violet.

“‘The Nereid!’ are you very sure the Nereid is a sound vessel?” he often asked.

“What should I know of the Nereid?” at last answered Ernest, impatiently.

“I believe you don’t care a rush for Violet!” cried Harry.  “You can have dreams instead!  Your Psyche, your winged angels and all your visions, they suffice you.  While for me,—­I tell you, Ernest, she is my flesh and blood, my meat and drink.  To think of her alone on that ocean drives me wild; that inexorable sea haunts me night and day.”  He turned to look at Ernest, and saw him pale and livid.

“God forgive me!” he said.  “I know you love her, too!  But it is our old quarrel; we cannot understand each other, yet cannot live either of us without the other.  Yet I am glad to quarrel even in the old way.  That is pleasant, after all, is it not?”

They had a long, stormy voyage home; and a delay in crossing France had made them miss the steamer they hoped to take.  At each delay, Ernest grew more silent, sadder, his face darker, his features thinner and more sharpened.  Harry was wild in his impatience, and angry, but more and more thoughtful and careful for Ernest.