“He was at Pompeii?” she whispered.

“Only for a little time this morning.  Then he and his party went away again in their car.”

“He was with the doctor,” said Marcella, hating to talk about him, but unable not to.

“Not when I saw him.  He was with those exceedingly noisy fellows—­the man who is severely pitted with small-pox and the man with the missing fingers.”

“Oh—­”

She turned away and answered him at random after that.  Even then she did not see that Louis had deliberately lied to her.  She was hurt that he could have gone to Pompeii without her:  she was indignant that he had gone with her abomination, the pock-marked man.  But perhaps it was only an accident!  She wondered, with sudden misgiving, if he could have been back on the boat for her and missed her.  But that his desertion was intentional she could not imagine.

Lights began to twinkle from the houses, to flare from the streets, to dance from the boats.  The sky of ultramarine became indigo with a green and mauve lightening to the west.  Over Vesuvius was a column of white smoke that now turned rosy, now coppery from the fires beneath.  Little boat loads of chattering people who seemed ghosts kept tumbling up the accommodation ladder out of the grey water; they seemed to come soundlessly as though they were produced by a conjuror’s hand, for no one could hear what they said:  only their gestures, their laughing, excited faces were visible.  A little cold hand squeezed Marcella’s, and she answered Jimmy’s eager questions about his father thoughtlessly, while a steamer coming into port hooted shrilly and desolately beyond the bar.  The little boats glided up and down, in and out of the shadows of big ships with double lights—­lights on board that were determinate and steady, reflections of lights that cracked and shivered and went in long, shimmering ribbons through the water.

“Most of the passengers are aboard now,” volunteered the schoolmaster.

“Are they?” she said, her heart sinking.  It came to her that he had gone, that she would never see him again.  And in that moment she knew just how much she wanted to see him:  and in that moment she saw him.

A boatload of men was zigzagging towards the Oriana with snatches of loud song, laughter and occasional shouts.  It was impossible to distinguish faces until the boat came within range of the vessel’s arc lamps.  And their dead white glare shone on Louis’s face—­and on his face alone, as far as Marcella was concerned.  He was grinning vacantly:  he looked very white.  As he swayed up the ladder she saw that his clothes were covered in dust.  Catching sight of her the minute he reached the deck, he lurched towards her.  She shrank away a little, frightened of the glazed stare of his eyes, his loose, slobbering mouth.  She knew that he was drunk, but he was not drunk as her father had been.  Wild thoughts flickered on the curtain