“A cigarette, Teresina, and some more lemonade.  Are you still there, San Miniato carissimo?  As I heard no more conversation I supposed you had drowned yourself as you proposed to do.”

“Donna Beatrice is so kind as to put off the execution until after dinner.”

“And shall we ever reach this dreadful place, and ever really dine?” asked the Marchesa.

“Before sunset,” answered San Miniato.  “And we shall dine at our usual hour.”

“At least it will not be so hot as in the hotel, and after all it has not been very fatiguing.”

“No,” said the Count, “I fail to see how your exertions can have tired you much.”

Ruggiero looked down at his master and at the fine lady as she lay listlessly extended in her cane chair, and he felt that in his heart he hated them both as much as he loved Beatrice, which was saying much.  But he wondered how it was that less than half an hour earlier he had been ready to upset the boat and drown every one in it indiscriminately.  Nevertheless he believed that if there had been a stiff breeze just then, enough for his purpose, he would have stopped the boat’s way, and then put the helm hard up again, without slacking out a single sheet, and he knew the little craft well enough to be sure of what would have happened.  Murderous intentions enough, as he thought of it all now, in the calm water under the great cliff from which tradition says that Tiberius shot delinquents into space from a catapult.

The men pulled hard by the lonely rocks, for the sun had almost set and they knew how sharp the stones are at Tragara, when one must tread them barefoot and burdened with hampers and kettles and all the paraphernalia of a picnic.

Then the light grew rich and deep, and the sea swallows shot from the misty heights, like arrows, into the calm purple air below, and skimmed and wheeled, and rose again, startled by the splash of the oars and the dull knock of them as they swung in the tholes.  And the water was like a mirror in which all manner of rare and lovely things are reflected, with blots of liquid gold and sheen of soft-hued damask, and great handfuls of pearls and opals strewn between, and roses and petals of many kinds of flowers without names.  And the air was full of the faint, salt odours that haunt the lonely places of the sea, sweet and bitter at once as the last days of a young life fading fast.  Then the great needles rose gigantic from the depths to heaven, and beyond, through the mysterious, shadowy arch that pierces one of them, was opened the glorious vision of a distant cloud-lit water, and a single dark sail far away stood still, as it were, on the very edge of the world.

Beatrice leaned back and gazed at the scene, and her delicate nostrils expanded as she breathed.  There was less colour in her face than there had been, and the long lashes half veiled her eyes.  San Miniato watched her narrowly.

“How beautiful!  How beautiful!” she exclaimed twice, after a long silence.