mother-of-pearl sky. The air was cool and fragrant with the odor of
growing things and the open sea glowed with a subdued, pulsating fire.

The capo stazione rushed madly back and forth striving by voice and
gesture to hasten the movements of his passengers.

"Partenza! Pronto!" he cried, then blew furiously upon his bugle.

After a series of shudders and convulsions the train began to hiss and
clank and finally crept on into the twilight, while the priest sat knee to
knee with his companion and resumed his endless questioning.

It was considerably after dark when Norvin Blake alighted at San
Sebastiano, to be greeted effusively by a young man of about his own
age who came charging through the gloom and embraced him with a great
hug.

"So! At last you come!" Savigno cried. "I have been here these three
hours eating my heart out, and every time I inquired of that head of a
cabbage in yonder he said, 'Pazienza! The world was not made in a
day!'

"'But when? When?' I kept repeating, and he could only assure me that
your train was approaching with the speed of the wind. The saints in
heaven--even the superintendent of the railway himself--could not tell
the exact hour of its arrival, which, it seems, is never twice the
same. And now, yourself? You are well?"

"Never better. And you? But there is no need to ask. You look
disgustingly contented. One would think you were already married."