“Little fool!” he murmured to himself.  “She’d give me her heart to break if I’d have it.”

And then he laughed in sheer ridicule of his own jaded senses.  He recognized the indifference of satiety.  An easy conquest no longer attracted him.

He began to stroll towards the quay, loitering here and there as if to give to Fates a chance to keep him if they would.  Yes, Sheila Melrose was a little idiot.  Why couldn’t she realize that she was but one of the hundreds with whom he flirted day by day?  She was nothing to him but a pastime—­a toy to amuse his wayward mood.  He had outgrown his earlier propensity to break his toys when he had done with them.  The sight of a broken toy revolted him now.

He was impatiently aware that the girl was watching him from the midst of the shifting crowd.  What did she expect, he asked himself irritably?  She knew him.  She knew his reputation.  Did she imagine herself the sort of woman to hold a man of his stamp for more than the passing moment?  Save for his title and estates, was he worth the holding?

A group of laughing Italian girls with kerchiefs on their heads surrounded him suddenly and he became the centre of a shower—­a storm—­of confetti.  His mood changed in a second.  He would show her what to expect!  Without an instant’s pause he turned upon his assailants, caught the one nearest to him, snatching her off her feet; and, gripping her without mercy, he kissed her fierily and shamelessly till she gasped with delicious fright; then dropped her and seized another.

The girls of Valrosa spoke of the ugly Englishman with bated breath and shining eyes long after Saltash had gone his unheeding way, for the blood was hot in his veins before the game was over.  If the magic had been slow to work, its spell was all the more compelling when it gripped him.  Characteristically, he tossed aside all considerations beyond the gratification of the moment’s desire.  The sinking fire of youth blazed up afresh.  He would get the utmost out of this last night of revelry.  Wherever he went, a spirit of wild daring, of fevered gaiety, surrounded him.  He was no longer alone, whichever way he turned.  Once in his mad progress he met Sheila Melrose face to face, and she drew back from him in open disgust.  He laughed at her maliciously, mockingly, as his royal forefather might have laughed long ago, and passed on with the throng.

Hours later, when the fete was over and the shore quite silent under the stars, he came alone along the quay, moving with his own peculiar arrogance of bearing, a cigarette between his lips, a deep gleam in his eyes.  It had been an amusing night after all.

Crossing the gangway to his yacht—­The Night Moth—­that rocked softly on the glimmering ripples, he paused for a moment and turned his face as if in farewell towards the little town that lay sleeping among its cypress-trees.  So standing, he heard again the tinkle of a lute from some hidden garden of delight.  It was as if the magic were still calling to him, luring him, reaching out white arms to hold him.  He made a brief bow towards the sound.