'It is a great French city,' Este answered her. 'I was never there. It is all light and noise and mirth, they say; it is carnival with them all the year round. They are very great in comedy and spectacle; they are half Greek and half Harlequin. What made you think of Paris? I would sooner you saw Mantua, with its water-meadows and its long lines of reeds, and its dying frescoes, and all the ghosts of the Gonzaga. What could make you think of Paris? The seagulls could not talk to you of it.'
'I met a stranger on the shore; he said he was of Paris.'
'A stranger? A young man?'
'He is not old.'
'Have you seen him before?'
'Yes—in the summer; before you came here. Then he went away, and now he is here again; and you will be very careful, because in the summer he made paintings of these tombs, and it may be that he will come back to do the same.'
Then she took the fish from the embers, and served them with a tempting grace upon some green leaves on one of the red and black dishes of the Etruscan ware. She took none of them herself; she ate her
