Well, there is a rage in the storms of late years which really transcends bounds; I do not remember if I have noted it in these sheets before:  but I never could have conceived a turbulence so huge.  Hour after hour I sat there that night, smoking a chibouque, reading, and listening to the batteries and lamentations of that haunted air, shrinking from it, fearing even for the Speranza by her quay in the sequestered harbour, and for the palace-pillars.  But what astonished me was that girl:  for, after sitting on the ottoman to my left some time, she fell sideways asleep, not the least fear about her, though I should have thought that nervousness at such a turmoil would be so natural to her:  and whence she has this light confidence in the world into which she has so abruptly come I do not know, for it is as though someone inspired her with the mood of nonchalance, saying:  ’Be of good cheer, and care not a pin about anything:  for God is God.’

I heard the ocean swing hoarse like heavy ordnance against the cliffs below, where they meet the outer surface of the southern of the two claws of land that form the harbour:  and the thought came into my mind:  ’If now I taught her to speak, to read, I could sometimes make her read a book to me.’

The winds seemed wilfully struggling for the house to snatch and wing it away into the drear Eternities of the night:  and I could not but heave the sigh:  ’Alas for us two poor waifs and castaways of our race, little bits of flotsam and seaweed-hair cast up here a moment, ah me, on this shore of the Ages, soon to be dragged back, O turgid Eternity, into thy abysmal gorge; and upon what strand—­who shall say?—­shall she next be flung, and I, divided then perhaps by all the stretch of the trillion-distanced astral gulf?’ And such a pity, and a wringing of the heart, seemed in things, that a tear fell from my eyes that ominous midnight.

She started up at a gust of more appalling volume, rubbing her eyes, with dishevelled hair (it must have been about midnight), listening a minute, with that demure, droll interest of hers, to the noise of the elements, and then smiled to me; rose then, left the room, and presently returned with a pomegranate and some almonds on a plate, also some delicious old sweet wine in a Samian cruche, and an old silver cup, gilt inside, standing in a zarf.  These she placed on the table near me, I murmuring:  ‘Hospitality.’

She looked at the book, which I read as I ate, with lowered left eye-lid, seeking to guess its use, I suppose.  Most things she understands at once, but this must have baffled her:  for to see one looking fixedly at a thing, and not know what one is looking at it for, must be very disconcerting.

I held it up before her, saying: 

“Shall I teach you to read it?  If I did, how would you repay me, you Clodagh?”

She cocked her eyes, seeking to comprehend.  God knows, at that moment I pitied the poor dumb waif, alone in all the whole round earth with me.  The candle-flame, moved by the wind like a slow-painting brush, flickered upon her face, though every cranny was closed.