Lola came up as I was scribbling this on my knees in the garden.

“What are you writing there?”

“I am recasting Hamlet’s soliloquy,” I replied, “and I feel all the better for it.”

“Here is your egg and brandy.”

I swallowed it and handed her back the glass.

“I feel all the better for that, too.”

As I sat in the shade of the little stone summer-house within the Greek portico, she lingered in the blazing sunshine, a figure all glorious health and supple curves, and the stray brown hairs above the brown mass gleamed with the gold of a Giotto aureole.  She stood, a duskily glowing, radiant emblem of life against the background of spring greenery and rioting convolvulus.  I drew a full breath and looked at her as if magnetised.  I had the very oddest sensation.  She seemed, in Shakespearean phrase, to rain influence upon me.  As if she read the stirrings of my blood, she smiled and said: 

“After all, confess, isn’t it good to be alive?”

A thrill of physical well-being swept through me.  I leaped to my feet.

“You witch!” I cried.  “What are you doing to me?”

“I?” She retreated a step, with a laugh.

“Yes, you.  You are casting a spell on me, so that I may eat my words.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about, but you haven’t answered my question.  It is good to be alive.”

“Well, it is,” I assented, losing all sense of consistency.

She flourished the egg-and-brandy glass.  “I’m so glad.  Now I know you are really well, and will face life as you faced death, like the brave man that you are.”

I cried to her to hold.  I had not intended to go as far as that.  I confronted death with a smile; I meet life with the wriest of wry faces.  She would have none of my arguments.

“No matter how damnable it is—­it’s splendid to be alive, just to feel that you can fight, just to feel that you don’t care a damn for any old thing that can happen, because you’re strong and brave.  I do want you to get back all that you’ve lost, all that you’ve lost through me, and you’ll do it.  I know that you’ll do it.  You’ll just go out and smash up the silly old world and bring it to your feet.  You will, Simon, won’t you?  I know you will.”

She quivered like an optimistic Cassandra.

“My dear Lola,” said I.

I was touched.  I took her hand and raised it to my lips, whereat she flushed like a girl.

“Did you come here to tell me all this?”

“No,” she replied simply.  “It came all of a sudden, as I was standing here.  I’ve often wanted to say it.  I’m glad I have.”

She threw back her head and regarded me a moment with a strange, proud smile; then turned and walked slowly away, her head brushing the long scarlet clusters of the pepper trees.

CHAPTER XVII