Prev | Current Page 51 | Next

Hichens, Robert Smythe, 1864-1950

"A Spirit in Prison"

What was it?"
"She was very excited watching a diver for /frutti di mare/."
"A boy about seventeen or eighteen, black hair, Arab eyes, bronze
skin, a smile difficult to refuse, and a figure almost as perfect as a
Nubian's, but rather squarer about the shoulders?"
"You have seen him, then?"
"Smoking ten of my special Khali Targa cigarettes, with his bare toes
cocked up, and one hand drooping into the Saint's Pool."
Hermione smiled.
"My cigarettes! They're common property here," she said.
"That boy can't be a pure-bred Neapolitan, surely. And yet he speaks
the language. There's no mistaking the blow he gives to the last
syllable of a sentence."
"He's a Sicilian, Vere says."
"Pure bred?"
"I don't know."
"I fancy I must have run across him somewhere in or about Naples. It
is he who made Vere, as I told her, look so insolently young this
morning."
"Ah, you noticed! I, too, thought I had never seen her so full of the
inner spirit of youth--almost as he was in Sicily.


Pages:
39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63