From a distance the _Euphrosyne_ looked very small. Glasses wereturned upon her from the decks of great liners, and she was pronounceda tramp, a cargo-boat, or one of those wretched little passengersteamers where people rolled about among the cattle on deck.

　　The insect-like figures of Dalloways, Ambroses, and Vinraces werealso derided, both from the extreme smallness of their personsand the doubt which only strong glasses could dispel as to whetherthey were really live creatures or only lumps on the rigging.

　　Mr. Pepper with all his learning had been mistaken for a cormorant,and then, as unjustly, transformed into a cow. At night,indeed, when the waltzes were swinging in the saloon, and giftedpassengers reciting, the little ship--shrunk to a few beads of lightout among the dark waves, and one high in air upon the mast-head--seemed something mysterious and impressive to heated partnersresting from the dance. She became a ship passing in the night--an emblem of the loneliness of human life, an occasion for queerconfidences and sudden appeals for sympathy.

　　On and on she went, by day and by night, following her path, until onemorning broke and showed the land. Losing its shadow-like appearanceit became first cleft and mountainous, next coloured grey and purple,next scattered with white blocks which gradually separated themselves,and then, as the progress of the ship acted upon the view like afield-glass of increasing power, became streets of houses. By nineo'clock the _Euphrosyne_ had taken up her position in the middleof a great bay; she dropped her anchor; immediately, as if she werea recumbent giant requiring examination, small boats came swarmingabout her. She rang with cries; men jumped on to her; her deckwas thumped by feet. The lonely little island was invaded from allquarters at once, and after four weeks of silence it was bewilderingto hear human speech. Mrs. Ambrose alone heeded none of this stir.

　　She was pale with suspense while the boat with mail bags was makingtowards them. Absorbed in her letters she did not notice that shehad left the _Euphrosyne_, and felt no sadness when the ship liftedup her voice and bellowed thrice like a cow separated from its calf.

　　"The children are well!" she exclaimed. Mr. Pepper, who sat opposite witha great mound of bag and rug upon his knees, said, "Gratifying." Rachel,to whom the end of the voyage meant a complete change of perspective,was too much bewildered by the approach of the shore to realisewhat children were well or why it was gratifying. Helen went on reading.

　　Moving very slowly, and rearing absurdly high over each wave,the little boat was now approaching a white crescent of sand.

　　Behind this was a deep green valley, with distinct hills on either side.

　　On the slope of the right-hand hill white houses with brown roofswere settled, like nesting sea-birds, and at intervals cypressesstriped the hill with black bars. Mountains whose sides wereflushed with red, but whose crowns were bald, rose as a pinnacle,half-concealing another pinnacle behind it. The hour beingstill early, the whole view was exquisitely light and airy;the blues and greens of sky and tree were intense but not sultry.

　　As they drew nearer and could distinguish details, the effect ofthe earth with its minute objects and colours and different formsof life was overwhelming after four weeks of the sea, and keptthem silent.

　　"Three hundred years odd," said Mr. Pepper meditatively at length.

　　As nobody said, "What?" he merely extracted a bottle and swalloweda pill. The piece of information that died within him was to the effectthat three hundred years ago five Elizabethan barques had anchoredwhere the _Euphrosyne_ now floated. Half-drawn up upon the beachlay an equal number of Spanish galleons, unmanned, for the countrywas still a virgin land behind a veil. Slipping across the water,the English sailors bore away bars of silver, bales of linen,timbers of cedar wood, golden crucifixes knobbed with emeralds.

　　When the Spaniards came down from their drinking, a fight ensued,the two parties churning up the sand, and driving each other intothe surf. The Spaniards, bloated with fine living upon the fruitsof the miraculous land, fell in heaps; but the hardy Englishmen,tawny with sea-voyaging, hairy for lack of razors, with muscleslike wire, fangs greedy for flesh, and fingers itching for gold,despatched the wounded, drove the dying into the sea, and soonreduced the natives to a state of superstitious wonderment.

　　Here a settlement was made; women were imported; children grew.

　　All seemed to favour the expansion of the British Empire, and hadthere been men like Richard Dalloway in the time of Charles the First,the map would undoubtedly be red where it is now an odious green.

　　But it must be supposed that the political mind of that age lackedimagination, and, merely for want of a few thousand pounds and a fewthousand men, the spark died that should have been a conflagration.

　　From the interior came Indians with subtle poisons, naked bodies,and painted idols; from the sea came vengeful Spaniards and rapaciousPortuguese; exposed to all these enemies (though the climate provedwonderfully kind and the earth abundant) the English dwindled awayand all but disappeared. Somewhere about the middle of the seventeenthcentury a single sloop watched its season and slipped out by night,bearing within it all that was left of the great British colony,a few men, a few women, and perhaps a dozen dusky children.

　　English history then denies all knowledge of the place. Owing toone cause and another civilisation shifted its centre to a spotsome four or five hundred miles to the south, and to-day SantaMarina is not much larger than it was three hundred years ago.

　　In population it is a happy compromise, for Portuguese fathers wedIndian mothers, and their children intermarry with the Spanish.

　　Although they get their ploughs from Manchester, they make theircoats from their own sheep, their silk from their own worms,and their furniture from their own cedar trees, so that in artsand industries the place is still much where it was in Elizabethandays.

　　The reasons which had drawn the English across the sea to founda small colony within the last ten years are not so easily described,and will never perhaps be recorded in history books. Granted facilityof travel, peace, good trade, and so on, there was besides a kindof dissatisfaction among the English with the older countriesand the enormous accumulations of carved stone, stained glass,and rich brown painting which they offered to the tourist.

　　The movement in search of something new was of course infinitely small,affecting only a handful of well-to-do people. It began by a fewschoolmasters serving their passage out to South America as the pursersof tramp steamers. They returned in time for the summer term,when their stories of the splendours and hardships of life at sea,the humours of sea-captains, the wonders of night and dawn, and themarvels of the place delighted outsiders, and sometimes found their wayinto print. The country itself taxed all their powers of description,for they said it was much bigger than Italy, and really noblerthan Greece. Again, they declared that the natives were strangelybeautiful, very big in stature, dark, passionate, and quick to seizethe knife. The place seemed new and full of new forms of beauty,in proof of which they showed handkerchiefs which the women had wornround their heads, and primitive carvings coloured bright greensand blues. Somehow or other, as fashions do, the fashion spread;an old monastery was quickly turned into a hotel, while a famousline of steamships altered its route for the convenience of passengers.

　　Oddly enough it happened that the least satisfactory of HelenAmbrose's brothers had been sent out years before to make his fortune,at any rate to keep clear of race-horses, in the very spotwhich had now become so popular. Often, leaning upon the columnin the verandah, he had watched the English ships with Englishschoolmasters for pursers steaming into the bay. Having at lengthearned enough to take a holiday, and being sick of the place,he proposed to put his villa, on the slope of the mountain,at his sister's disposal. She, too, had been a little stirred bythe talk of a new world, where there was always sun and never a fog,which went on around her, and the chance, when they were planningwhere to spend the winter out of England, seemed too good to be missed.

　　For these reasons she determined to accept Willoughby's offerof free passages on his ship, to place the children with theirgrand-parents, and to do the thing thoroughly while she was about it.

　　Taking seats in a carriage drawn by long-tailed horses with pheasants'

　　feathers erect between their ears, the Ambroses, Mr. Pepper,and Rachel rattled out of the harbour. The day increased in heatas they drove up the hill. The road passed through the town,where men seemed to be beating brass and crying "Water," wherethe passage was blocked by mules and cleared by whips and curses,where the women walked barefoot, their heads balancing baskets,and cripples hastily displayed mutilated members; it issued amongsteep green fields, not so green but that the earth showed through.

　　Great trees now shaded all but the centre of the road, and amountain stream, so shallow and so swift that it plaited itselfinto strands as it ran, raced along the edge. Higher they went,until Ridley and Rachel walked behind; next they turned alonga lane scattered with stones, where Mr. Pepper raised his stick andsilently indicated a shrub, bearing among sparse leaves a voluminouspurple blossom; and at a rickety canter the last stage of the waywas accomplished.

　　The villa was a roomy white house, which, as is the case with mostcontinental houses, looked to an English eye frail, ramshackle,and absurdly frivolous, more like a pagoda in a tea-garden than aplace where one slept. The garden called urgently for the servicesof gardener. Bushes waved their branches across the paths,and the blades of grass, with spaces of earth between them,could be counted. In the circular piece of ground in front ofthe verandah were two cracked vases, from which red flowers drooped,with a stone fountain between them, now parched in the sun.

　　The circular garden led to a long garden, where the gardener'sshears had scarcely been, unless now and then, when he cut a boughof blossom for his beloved. A few tall trees shaded it, and roundbushes with wax-like flowers mobbed their heads together in a row.

　　A garden smoothly laid with turf, divided by thick hedges, with raisedbeds of bright flowers, such as we keep within walls in England,would have been out of place upon the side of this bare hill.

　　There was no ugliness to shut out, and the villa looked straightacross the shoulder of a slope, ribbed with olive trees, to the sea.

　　The indecency of the whole place struck Mrs. Chailey forcibly.

　　There were no blinds to shut out the sun, nor was there any furnitureto speak of for the sun to spoil. Standing in the bare stone hall,and surveying a staircase of superb breadth, but cracked and carpetless,she further ventured the opinion that there were rats, as largeas terriers at home, and that if one put one's foot down with anyforce one would come through the floor. As for hot water--at thispoint her investigations left her speechless.

　　"Poor creature!" she murmured to the sallow Spanish servant-girlwho came out with the pigs and hens to receive them, "no wonder youhardly look like a human being!" Maria accepted the complimentwith an exquisite Spanish grace. In Chailey's opinion they wouldhave done better to stay on board an English ship, but none knewbetter than she that her duty commanded her to stay.

　　When they were settled in, and in train to find daily occupation,there was some speculation as to the reasons which inducedMr. Pepper to stay, taking up his lodging in the Ambroses' house.

　　Efforts had been made for some days before landing to impressupon him the advantages of the Amazons.

　　"That great stream!" Helen would begin, gazing as if she sawa visionary cascade, "I've a good mind to go with you myself,Willoughby--only I can't. Think of the sunsets and the moonrises--I believe the colours are unimaginable.""There are wild peacocks," Rachel hazarded.

　　"And marvellous creatures in the water," Helen asserted.

　　"One might discover a new reptile," Rachel continued.

　　"There's certain to be a revolution, I'm told," Helen urged.

　　The effect of these subterfuges was a little dashed by Ridley, who,after regarding Pepper for some moments, sighed aloud, "Poor fellow!"and inwardly speculated upon the unkindness of women.

　　He stayed, however, in apparent contentment for six days,playing with a microscope and a notebook in one of the many sparselyfurnished sitting-rooms, but on the evening of the seventh day,as they sat at dinner, he appeared more restless than usual.

　　The dinner-table was set between two long windows which were leftuncurtained by Helen's orders. Darkness fell as sharply as a knifein this climate, and the town then sprang out in circles and linesof bright dots beneath them. Buildings which never showed by dayshowed by night, and the sea flowed right over the land judgingby the moving lights of the steamers. The sight fulfilled the samepurpose as an orchestra in a London restaurant, and silencehad its setting. William Pepper observed it for some time;he put on his spectacles to contemplate the scene.

　　"I've identified the big block to the left," he observed, and pointedwith his fork at a square formed by several rows of lights.

　　"One should infer that they can cook vegetables," he added.

　　"An hotel?" said Helen.

　　"Once a monastery," said Mr. Pepper.

　　Nothing more was said then, but, the day after, Mr. Pepper returnedfrom a midday walk, and stood silently before Helen who was readingin the verandah.

　　"I've taken a room over there," he said.

　　"You're not going?" she exclaimed.

　　"On the whole--yes," he remarked. "No private cook _can_ cook vegetables."Knowing his dislike of questions, which she to some extent shared,Helen asked no more. Still, an uneasy suspicion lurked in her mindthat William was hiding a wound. She flushed to think that her words,or her husband's, or Rachel's had penetrated and stung. She washalf-moved to cry, "Stop, William; explain!" and would have returnedto the subject at luncheon if William had not shown himself inscrutableand chill, lifting fragments of salad on the point of his fork,with the gesture of a man pronging seaweed, detecting gravel,suspecting germs.

　　"If you all die of typhoid I won't be responsible!" he snapped.

　　"If you die of dulness, neither will I," Helen echoed in her heart.

　　She reflected that she had never yet asked him whether he had beenin love. They had got further and further from that subject insteadof drawing nearer to it, and she could not help feeling it a reliefwhen William Pepper, with all his knowledge, his microscope,his note-books, his genuine kindliness and good sense, but a certaindryness of soul, took his departure. Also she could not helpfeeling it sad that friendships should end thus, although in thiscase to have the room empty was something of a comfort, and shetried to console herself with the reflection that one never knowshow far other people feel the things they might be supposed to feel.