“Another child,” said Dion.

He still had his arm round her shoulder.

“Why did you come here?” he asked.

“To look at the evening coming to me over the wilderness.  But he made me forget it for a moment.”

Dion was staring at her now.

“I believe a child could make you forget anything,” he said.

“Let’s go to him.”

The gold of the evening was strengthening and deepening.  The vast view, which was the background to the child’s little figure, was losing its robe of green and of blue, green of the land, blue of the sea, was putting on velvety darkness and gold.  The serpentine river was a long band of gold flung out, as if by a careless enchanter, towards the golden sea in which Zante was dreaming.  Remote and immense this land had seemed in the full daytime, a tremendous pastoral deserted by men, sufficient to itself and existing only for its own beauty.  Now it existed for a child.  The human element had caused nature, as it were, to recede, to take the second place.  A child, bending down to pick up a shot quail, then straightening up victoriously, held the vast panorama in submission, as if he had quietly given out the order, “Make me significant.”  And Rosamund, who had stolen away to meet the evening, was now only intent on knowing whether the shot bird was a quail or not.

It was a quail, and a fat one.

When they came to the boy they found him a barefooted urchin, with tattered coarse clothes and densely thick, uncovered black hair growing down almost to his fiery young eyes, which stared at them proudly.  There was a wild look in those eyes never to be found in the eyes of a dweller in cities, a wild grace in his figure, and a complete self-possession in his whole bearing.  The quail just shot he had in his hand.  Another was stuffed into the large pocket of his jacket.  He pulled it out and showed it to them, reading at a glance the admiration in Rosamund’s eyes.  Dion held out a hand to the boy’s gun, but at this his manner changed, he clutched it tightly, moved a step or two back, and scowled.

“He’s a regular young savage,” said Dion.

“I like him as he is.  Besides, why should he give his gun to a stranger?  He knows nothing about us.”

“You’re immense!” said Dion, laughing.

“Let’s have the quail for our dinner.”

“D’you expect him to give them to us without a stand-up fight and probably bloodshed?  For he’s armed, unfortunately!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.  Look here, Dion, you go off for a minute, and leave him with me.  I think you get on his nerves.”

“Well, I’m——!”