“—­Prends mon coeur, me dit-elle,
Oui, mais a la chapelle,
Sois mon petit.... 
—­Plait-il
Ton petit? 
—­Sois mon petit mari!”

—­It was Calabressa who was gayly humming to himself; and it was well that he could amuse himself with his chansons and his cigarettes, for his friend Edwards was proving anything but an attentive companion.  The tall, near-sighted, blond-faced man from the British Museum was far too much engrossed by the scene around him.  They were walking along the quays at Naples; and it so happened that at this moment all the picturesque squalor and lazy life of the place were lit up by the glare reflected from a wild and stormy sunset.  The tall, pink-fronted houses; the mules and oxen with their brazen yokes and tinkling bells; the fruit-sellers, and fish-sellers, and water-carriers, in costumes of many hues; the mendicant friars with their cloak and hood of russet-brown; the priests black and clean-shaven; the groups of women, swarthy of face, with head-dresses of red or yellow, clustered round the stalls; the children, in rags of brown, and scarlet, and olive-green, lying about the pavement as if artists had posed them there—­all these formed a picture which was almost bewildering in its richness of color, and was no doubt rendered all the more brilliant because of the powerful contrast with the dark and driven sea.  For the waters out there were racing in before a stiff breeze, and springing high on the fortresses and rocks; and the clouds overhead were seething and twisting, with many a sudden flash of orange; and then, far away beyond all this color and motion and change, rose the vast and gloomy bulk of Vesuvius, overshadowed and thunderous, as if the mountain were charged with a coming storm.

Calabressa grew impatient, despite his careless song.

    “—­Me seras tu fidele.... 
     —­Comme une tourterelle. 
       —­Eh bieu, ca va.... 
       Ca va! 
       —­Ca me va! 
     —­Comme ca, ca me va!

—­Diable, Monsieur Edouarts!  You are very silent.  You do not know where we are going, perhaps?”

Edwards started, as if he were waking from a reverie.

“Oh yes, Signor Calabressa,” said he, “I am not likely to forget that.  Perhaps I think more seriously about it than you.  To you it is nothing.  But I cannot forget, you see, that you and I are practically conniving at a murder.”

“Hush, hush, my dear friend!” said Calabressa, glancing round.  “Be discreet!  And what a foolish phrase, too!  You—­you whose business is merely to translate; to preach; to educate a poor devil of a Russian—­what have you to do with it?  And to speak of murder!  Bah!  You do not understand the difference, then, between killing a man as an act of private anger and revenge, and executing a man for crimes against society?  My good friend Edouarts, you have lived all your life among books, but you have not learned any logic—­no!”