On our return from that expedition we came gliding into the old harbour so late that Dominic and I, making for the cafe kept by Madame Leonore, found it empty of customers, except for two rather sinister fellows playing cards together at a corner table near the door. The first thing done by Madame Leonore was to put her hands on Dominic’s shoulders and look at arm’s length into the eyes of that man of audacious deeds and wild stratagems who smiled straight at her from under his heavy and, at that time, uncurled moustaches.

Indeed we didn’t present a neat appearance, our faces unshaven, with the traces of dried salt sprays on our smarting skins and the sleeplessness of full forty hours filming our eyes. At least it was so with me who saw as through a mist Madame Leonore moving with her mature nonchalant grace, setting before us wine and glasses with a faint swish of her ample black skirt. Under the elaborate structure of black hair her jet-black eyes sparkled like good-humoured stars and even I could see that she was tremendously excited at having this lawless wanderer Dominic within her reach and as it were in her power. Presently she sat down by us, touched lightly Dominic’s curly head silvered on the temples (she couldn’t really help it), gazed at me for a while with a quizzical smile, observed that I looked very tired, and asked Dominic whether for all that I was likely to sleep soundly to-night.

“I don’t know,” said Dominic, “He’s young. And there is always the chance of dreams.”

“What do you men dream of in those little barques of yours tossing for months on the water?”

“Mostly of nothing,” said Dominic. “But it has happened to me to dream of furious fights.”

“And of furious loves, too, no doubt,” she caught him up in a mocking voice.

“No, that’s for the waking hours,” Dominic drawled, basking sleepily with his head between his hands in her ardent gaze. “The waking hours are longer.”

“They must be, at sea,” she said, never taking her eyes off him. “But I suppose you do talk of your loves sometimes.”

“You may be sure, Madame Leonore,” I interjected, noticing the hoarseness of my voice, “that you at any rate are talked about a lot at sea.”

“I am not so sure of that now. There is that strange lady from the Prado that you took him to see, Signorino. She went to his head like a glass of wine into a tender youngster’s. He is such a child, and I suppose that I am another. Shame to confess it, the other morning I got a friend to look after the cafe for a couple of hours, wrapped up my head, and walked out there to the other end of the town. . . . Look at these two sitting up! And I thought they were so sleepy and tired, the poor fellows!”

She kept our curiosity in suspense for a moment.

“Well, I have seen your marvel, Dominic,” she continued in a calm voice. “She came flying out of the gate on horseback and it would have been all I would have seen of her if — and this is for you, Signorino — if she hadn’t pulled up in the main alley to wait for a very good-looking cavalier. He had his moustaches so, and his teeth were very white when he smiled at her. But his eyes are too deep in his head for my taste. I didn’t like it. It reminded me of a certain very severe priest who used to come to our village when I was young; younger even than your marvel, Dominic.”

“It was no priest in disguise, Madame Leonore,” I said, amused by her expression of disgust. “That’s an American.”

“Ah! Un Americano! Well, never mind him. It was her that I went to see.”

“What! Walked to the other end of the town to see Dona Rita!” Dominic addressed her in a low bantering tone. “Why, you were always telling me you couldn’t walk further than the end of the quay to save your life — or even mine, you said.”

“Well, I did; and I walked back again and between the two walks I had a good look. And you may be sure — that will surprise you both — that on the way back — oh, Santa Madre, wasn’t it a long way, too — I wasn’t thinking of any man at sea or on shore in that connection.”

“No. And you were not thinking of yourself, either, I suppose,” I said. Speaking was a matter of great effort for me, whether I was too tired or too sleepy, I can’t tell. “No, you were not thinking of yourself. You were thinking of a woman, though.”

“Si. As much a woman as any of us that ever breathed in the world. Yes, of her! Of that very one! You see, we woman are not like you men, indifferent to each other unless by some exception. Men say we are always against one another but that’s only men’s conceit. What can she be to me? I am not afraid of the big child here,” and she tapped Dominic’s forearm on which he rested his head with a fascinated stare. “With us two it is for life and death, and I am rather pleased that there is something yet in him that can catch fire on occasion. I would have thought less of him if he hadn’t been able to get out of hand a little, for something really fine. As for you, Signorino,” she turned on me with an unexpected and sarcastic sally, “I am not in love with you yet.” She changed her tone from sarcasm to a soft and even dreamy note. “A head like a gem,” went on that woman born in some by-street of Rome, and a plaything for years of God knows what obscure fates. “Yes, Dominic! Antica. I haven’t been haunted by a face since — since I was sixteen years old. It was the face of a young cavalier in the street. He was on horseback, too. He never looked at me, I never saw him again, and I loved him for — for days and days and days. That was the sort of face he had. And her face is of the same sort. She had a man’s hat, too, on her head. So high!”

“A man’s hat on her head,” remarked with profound displeasure Dominic, to whom this wonder, at least, of all the wonders of the earth, was apparently unknown.

“Si. And her face has haunted me. Not so long as that other but more touchingly because I am no longer sixteen and this is a woman. Yes, I did think of her, I myself was once that age and I, too, had a face of my own to show to the world, though not so superb. And I, too, didn’t know why I had come into the world any more than she does.”

“And now you know,” Dominic growled softly, with his head still between his hands.

She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only sighed lightly.

“And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be haunted by her face?” I asked.

I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh. For she seemed only to be thinking of herself and looked not in my direction. But suddenly she roused up.

“Of her?” she repeated in a louder voice. “Why should I talk of another woman? And then she is a great lady.”

At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once.

“Isn’t she? Well, no, perhaps she isn’t; but you may be sure of one thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more than any one that I have seen. Keep that well in your mind: She is for no man! She would be vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held.”

I caught my breath. “Inconstant,” I whispered.

“I don’t say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full of pity. Signorino, you don’t know much about women. And you may learn something yet or you may not; but what you learn from her you will never forget.”

“Not to be held,” I murmured; and she whom the quayside called Madame Leonore closed her outstretched hand before my face and opene............