For Gaspare was difficult to deceive.
"Gaspare!" she said.
"Si, Signora," he replied, without turning his head.
"Can't you row sitting down?"
"If you like, Signora."
"We can talk better then."
"Va bene, Signora."
He turned round and sat down.
The boat was at this moment just off the "Palace of the Spirits."
Hermione saw its shattered walls cruelly lit up by the blazing sun,
its gaping window-spaces like eye-sockets, sightless, staring,
horribly suggestive of ruin and despair.
She was like that. Gaspare was looking at her. Gaspare must know that
she was like that.
But she was a fanatic just then, and she smiled at him with a
resolution that had in it something almost brutal, something the
opposite of what she was, of the sum of her.
"I forgot the time. It is so lovely to-day. It was so gay at
Mergellina."
"Si?"
"I sat for a long time watching the boats, and the boys bathing, and
listening to the music. They sang 'A Mergellina.' "
"Si?"
She smiled again.
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