“I hope you are keeping well; and I know you are being brave.”

“I am alive,” she said, “but my life has none the less ended.”

“You must not think or feel so.  Let me say a thing that comforted me in the mouth of another when I lost my mother.  It was an old clergyman who said it.  ’Think what the dead would wish and try to please them.’  It doesn’t sound much; but if you consider, it is helpful.”

The boat was speedy and she soon slipped out between the historic castles that stood on either bank of the entrance to the harbour.

Mrs. Pendean spoke.

“All this loveliness and peace seem to make my heart more sore.  When people suffer, they should go where nature suffers too—­to bleak, sad regions.”

“You must occupy yourself.  You must try to lose yourself in work—­in working your fingers to the bone if need be.  There is nothing like mental and physical toil at a time of suffering.”

“That is only a drug.  You might as well drink, or take opium.  I wouldn’t run away from my grief if I could.  I owe it to the dead.”

“You are not a coward.  You must live and make the world happier for your life.”

She smiled for the first time—­a flicker, that lightened her beauty for a moment and quickly died.

“You are good and kind and wise,” she answered.  Then she changed the subject and pointed to the man in the bows.  He sat upright with his back to them at the wheel forward.  He had taken off his hat and was singing very gently to himself, but hardly loud enough to be heard against the drone of the engines.  His song was from an early opera of Verdi.

“Have you noticed that man?”

Mark shook his head.

“He is an Italian.  He comes from Turin but has worked in England for some time.  He looks to me more Greek than Italian—­not modern Greek but from classical times—­the times I used to study as a schoolgirl.  He has a head like a statue.”

She called to the boatman.

“Stand out a mile or so, Doria,” she said.  “I want Mr. Brendon to see the coast line.”

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” he answered and altered their course for the open sea.

He had turned at Jenny Pendean’s voice and shown Mark a brown, bright, clean-shorn face of great beauty.  It was of classical contour, but lacked the soulless perfection of the Greek ideal.  The Italian’s black eyes were brilliant and showed intelligence.

“Giuseppe Doria has a wonderful story about himself,” continued Mrs. Pendean.  “Uncle Ben tells me that he claims descent from a very ancient family and is the last of the Dorias of—­I forget—­some place near Ventimiglia.  My uncle thinks the world of him; but I hope he is as trustworthy and as honest in character as he is handsome in person.”

“He certainly might be well born.  There is distinction, quality, and breeding about his appearance.”

“He is clever, too—­an all-round sort of man, like most sailors.”