It did not belong
to her strange mood, the mood of one drawing near to the verge either
of some abominable collapse or of some terrible activity.
Occasionally, she thought of Ruffo; but always as one of the brown
boys bathing from the rocks beyond the harbor, shouting, laughing,
triumphant in his glorious youth. And when the link was, as it were,
just beginning to form itself from the thought-shape of youth to
another thought-shape, her mind stopped short in that progress,
recoiled, like a creature recoiling from a precipice it has not seen
but has divined in the dark. She sipped the vermouth and the iced
water, and stared at the drops chasing each other down the clouded
glass. And for a time she was not conscious where she was, and heard
none of the noises round about her.
It was the song of Mergellina, sung at some distance off in dialect,
by a tenor voice to the accompaniment of a piano-organ. Hermione
ceased from gazing at the drops on the glass, looked up, listened.
The song came nearer.
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