She looked at him for a long time, opened her lips but in the end only sighed lightly.
"And what do you know of her, you who have seen her so well as to be haunted by her face?" I asked.
I wouldn't have been surprised if she had answered me with another sigh. For she seemed only to be thinking of herself and looked not in my direction. But suddenly she roused up.
"Of her?" she repeated in a louder voice. "Why should I talk of another woman? And then she is a great lady."
At this I could not repress a smile which she detected at once.
"Isn't she? Well, no, perhaps she isn't; but you may be sure of one thing, that she is both flesh and shadow more than any one that I have seen. Keep that well in your mind: She is for no man! She would be vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held."
I caught my breath. "Inconstant," I whispered.
"I don't say that. Maybe too proud, too wilful, too full of pity. Signorino, you don't know much about women. And you may learn something yet or you may not; but what you learn from her you will never forget."
"Not to be held," I murmured; and she whom the quayside called Madame Leonore closed her outstretched hand before my face and opened it at once to show its emptiness in illustration of her expressed opinion. Dominic never moved.
I wished good-night to these two and left the cafe for the fresh air and the dark spaciousness of the quays augmented by all the width of the old Port where between the trails of light the shadows of heavy hulls appeared very black, merging their outlines in a great confusion. I left behind
