sang Eve.  “Ah, there they are!  I am so tired that I could fall asleep here, if there were but a reed to lean against!”

“Appoggiatevi a me” sighed a murmurous voice in her ear, with musical monotone.

A little shiver ran over Eve, but no soul saw it; in an instant she knew the sound that had all day haunted the sea-turn; yet she could neither smile nor be angry at Luigi’s simplicity; with a peremptory motion of her hand, she only waved him away, and fortified herself among her companions, who, thoroughly awakened, made the night ring as they wended along.  They rallied Eve, then grew vexed that she refused the sport, and kept silence awhile, only to break it with gayer laughter, elate with life while half the world was stretched in white repose.  At length they paused to rest in the lee of a cottage that seemed more like a hulk drawn up on shore than any house, but matted from ground to chimney in a smother of woodbine.

“A picturesque place,” said one of the chevaliers.

“And a picturesque body lives in it,” replied another.  “The beauty of the fisher-maidens.  I have seen her out upon the flats at low tide digging for clams, barefooted, the short petticoats fluttering, a handkerchief across her ears,—­and outline could do no more.”

“I have seen her, too,” said Eve.  “Though she lives in the belt of sunburn, she is white as snow,—­milk-white, with hazel eyes.  She has hair like Sordello’s Elys.  She is a girl that dreams.  Let us serenade her till she sees visions.”

And Eve’s voice went warbling lightly up, till the others joined, as if the oriole in his hanging nest not far away had stirred to sing out the seasons of the dark.

    “The hours that bear thy beauty prize
      Star after star sinks numbering,—­
    The laden wind at thy lattice sighs
      To find thee slumbering, slumbering!

    “Ah, wantonly why waste these hours
      That love would fain be borrowing? 
    Soon youth and joy must fall like flowers,
      And leave thee sorrowing, sorrowing!

    “Ye fleeting hours, ye sacred skies,
      Sweet airs around her hovering,
    Oh, open me the envied eyes
      Your spells are covering, covering!

    “Or only, while the dew’s soft showers
      Shake slowly into glistening,
    Let her, O magic midnight hours,
      In dreams be listening, listening!”

And their voices blended so together as they sang, and the plunge of the sea came on the east-wind in such chiming chord, that they never heeded the old mandolin whose strings in humble remoteness Luigi struck to their tune.  But mingling the sound of the sea and the sound of the strings in her memory, it seemed to Eve that Luigi was fast becoming the undertone of her life.

* * * * *

But Luigi was not to be abashed.  Faint heart never won fair lady, he said to himself, in some answering apophthegm.  And thereat he summoned his reserves.