Before serving dinner he placed upon the table, in the guise of an aperitive, a fat-bellied bottle of native wine, a nectar from the slopes of Vesuvius with a slight taste of sulphur.  Freya was thirsty and was suspicious of the water of the trattoria.  Ulysses must forget his recent mortification....  And the two made their libations to the gods, with an unmixed drink in which not a drop of water cut the jeweled transparency of the precious wine.

A group of singers and dancers now invaded the terrace.  A coppery-hued girl, handsome and dirty, with wavy hair, great gold hoops in her ears and an apron of many colored stripes, was dancing under the arbor, waving on high a tambourine that was almost the size of a parasol.  Two bow-legged youngsters, dressed like ancient lazzarones in red caps, were accompanying with shouts the agitated dance of the tarantella.

The gulf was taking on a pinkish light under the oblique rays of the sun, as though there were growing within it immense groves of coral.  The blue of the sky had also turned rosy and the mountain seemed aflame in the afterglow.  The plume of Vesuvius was less white than in the morning; its nebulous column, streaked with reddish flutings by the dying light, appeared to be reflecting its interior fire.

Ulysses felt the friendly placidity that a landscape contemplated in childhood always inspires.  Many a time he had seen this same panorama with its dancing girls and its volcano there in his old home at Valencia; he had seen it on the fans called “Roman Style” that his father used to collect.

Freya felt as moved as her companion.  The blue of the gulf was of an extreme intensity in the parts not reflected by the sun; the coast appeared of ochre; although the houses had tawdry facades, all these discordant elements were now blended and interfused in subdued and exquisite harmony.  The shrubbery was trembling rhythmically under the breeze.  The very air was musical, as though in its waves were vibrating the strings of invisible harps.

This was for Freya the true Greece imagined by the poets, not the island of burned-out rocks denuded of vegetation that she had seen and heard spoken of in her excursions through the Hellenic archipelago.

“To live here the rest of my life!” she murmured with misty eyes.  “To die here, forgotten, alone, happy!...”

Ferragut also would like to die in Naples ... but with her!...  And his quick and exuberant imagination described the delights of life for the two,—­a life of love and mystery in some one of the little villas, with a garden peeping out over the sea on the slopes of Posilipo.

The dancers had passed down to the lower terrace where the crowd was greater.  New customers were entering, almost all in pairs, as the day was fading.  The waiter had ushered some highly-painted women with enormous hats, followed by some young men, into the locked dining-room.  Through the half-open door came the noise of pursuit, collision and rebound with brutal roars of laughter.