As she lay awake thus, staring at the ceiling, feeling in the intense silence and blackness that the fluttering of her eyelids was almost audible, her heart beating irregularly, now slow, now fast, it occurred to her that she was beginning to know something of the intensity of real life—­real grown-up life.  She was astonished to enjoy it so little.

She fell at last, suddenly, fathoms deep into youthful slumber, and at once passed out from tormented darkness into some strange, sunny, wind-swept place on a height.  And she was all one anguish of longing for Austin.  And he came swiftly to her and took her in his arms and kissed her on the lips.  And it was as it had been when she was a child and heard music, she was carried away by a great swelling tide of joy ...  But dusk began to fall again; Austin faded; through the darkness something called and called to her, imperatively.  With great pain she struggled up through endless stages of half-consciousness, until she was herself again, Sylvia Marshall, heavy-eyed, sitting up in her berth and saying aloud, “Yes, what is it?” in answer to a knocking on the door.

The steward’s voice answered, announcing that the first boat for shore would leave in an hour.  Sylvia sprang out of bed, the dream already nothing more than confused brightness in her mind.  By the time she was dressed, it had altogether gone, and she only knew that she had had a restless night.  She went out on the deck, longing for the tonic of pure air.  The morning was misty—­it had rained during the night—­and clouds hung heavy and low over the city.  Out from this gray smother the city gleamed like a veiled opal.  Neither Felix nor her aunt was to be seen.  When she went down to breakfast, after a brisk tramp back and forth across the deck, she was rosy and dewy, her triumphant youth showing no sign of her vigils.  She was saying to herself:  “Now I’ve come, it’s too idiotic not to enjoy it.  I shall let myself go!”

Helene attended to the ladies’ packing and to the labeling and care of the baggage.  Empty-handed, care-free, feeling like a traveling princess, Sylvia climbed down from the great steamer into a dirty, small harbor-boat.  Aunt Victoria sat down at once on the folding camp-chair which Helene always carried for her.  Sylvia and Felix stood together at the blunt prow, watching the spectacle before them.  The clouds were lifting from the city and from Vesuvius, and from Sylvia’s mind.  Her spirits rose as the boat went forward into the strange, foreign, glowing scene.

The oily water shimmered in smooth heavings as the clumsy boat advanced upon it.  The white houses on the hills gleamed out from their palms.  As the boat came closer to the wharf, the travelers could see the crowds of foreign-looking people, with swarthy faces and cheap, ungraceful clothes, looking out at the boat with alert, speculative, unwelcoming eyes.  The noise of the city streets, strange to their ears after the days of sea silence, rose clattering, like a part of the brilliance, the sparkle.  The sun broke through the clouds, poured a flood of glory on the refulgent city, and shone hotly on the pools of dirty water caught in the sunken spots of the uneven stone pavement.