“Where are you taking me, sir?” she said in English.

“Sandra, will you be a good child?  It is anywhere you please, if you will promise—­”

“I will promise nothing.”

“Zen, I lock you up in Verona.”  In Verona!”

“Sandra, will you promise to me?”

“I will promise nothing.”

“Zen I lock you up in Verona.  It is settled.  No more of it.  I come to say, we shall not reach a village.  I am sorry.  We have soldiers for a guard.  You draw out a board and lodge in your carriage as in a bed.  Biscuits, potted meats, prunes, bon-bona, chocolate, wine—­you shall find all at your right hand and your left.  I am desolate in offending you.  Sandra, if you will promise—­”

“I will promise—­this is what I will promise,” said Vittoria.

Pericles thrust his ear forward, and withdrew it as if it had been slapped.

She promised to run from him at the first opportunity, to despise him ever after, and never to sing again in his hearing.  With the darkness Luigi appeared to light her lamp; he mouthed perpetually, “To-morrow, to-morrow.”  The watch-fires of Austrians encamped in the fields encircled her; and moving up and down, the cigar of Antonio-Pericles was visible.  He had not eaten or drunk, and he was out there sleepless; he walked conquering his fears in the thick of war troubles:  all for her sake.  She watched critically to see whether the cigar-light was puffed in fretfulness.  It burned steadily; and the thought of Pericles supporting patience quite overcame her.  In a fit of humour that was almost tears, she called to him and begged him to take a place in the carriage and have food.  “If it is your pleasure,” he said; and threw off his cloak.  The wine comforted him.  Thereupon he commenced a series of strange gesticulations, and ended by blinking at the window, saying, “No, no; it is impossible to explain.  I have no voice; I am not, gifted.  It is,” he tapped at his chest, “it is here.  It is, imprisoned in me.”

“What?” said Vittoria, to encourage him.

“It can never be explained, my child.  Am I not respectful to you?  Am I not worshipful to you?  But, no! it can never be explained.  Some do call me mad.  I know it; I am laughed at.  Oh! do I not know zat?  Perfectly well.  My ancestors adored Goddesses.  I discover ze voice of a Goddess:  I adore it.  So you call me mad; it is to me what you call me—­juste ze same.  I am possessed wiz passion for her voice.  So it will be till I go to ashes.  It is to me ze one zsing divine in a pig, a porpoise world.  It is to me—­I talk!  It is unutterable—­impossible to tell.”

“But I understand it; I know you must feel it,” said Vittoria.

“But you hate me, Sandra.  You hate your Pericles.”

“No, I do not; you are my good friend, my good Pericles.”

“I am your good Pericles?  So you obey me?”

“In what?”

“You come to London?”