Artois rested his arms on the balustrade.
The ristorante was nearly full now, gay with lights and with a tempest
of talk. The waiter came to ask if the Signore would take coffee.
Artois hesitated a moment, then shook his head. He realized that his
nerves had been tried enough in these last days and nights. He must
let them rest for a while.
The waiter went away, and he turned once more towards the sea.
To-night he felt the wonder of Italy, of this part of the land and of
its people, as he had not felt it before, in a new and, as it seemed
to him, a mysterious way. A very modern man and, in his art, a
realist, to-night there was surely something very young alert within
him, something of vague sentimentality that was like an echo from
Byronic days. He felt over-shadowed, but not unpleasantly, by a dim
and exquisite melancholy, in which he thought of nature and of human
nature pathetically, linking them together; those singing voices with
the stars, the women who leaned on balconies to listen with the sea
that was murmuring below them, the fishermen upon that sea with the
deep and marvellous sky that watched their labors.
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