confidences with the sunlit element to whose friendly caresses he had abandoned his body.  How calm it was, too, in this evening light.  Near at hand, somewhere, lay a sounding cave; it sang a melody of moist content.  Shadows lengthened; fishing boats, moving outward for their night-work, steered darkly across the luminous river at his feet.  Those jewel-like morning tints of blue and green had faded from the water; the southern cliff-scenery, projections of it, caught a fiery glare.  Bastions of flame. . . .

The air seemed to have become unusually cool and bracing.

Here, on a bench all by himself, sat Count Caloveglia.  As the bishop took a seat beside him they exchanged a few words.  The Italian, so affable as a rule, was rather preoccupied and disinclined for talk.

Mr. Heard remembered his first encounter with that old man—­the Salt of the South, as Keith had called him.  It was at those theatricals in the Municipality.  Then too the Count had been remarkably silent, his chin reposing in his hand, absorbed in the spectacle—­in the passionate grace of the young players.  He was absorbed in another spectacle now—­the old sun, moving in passionless splendour down the sky.

Only a fortnight ago, that first meeting.  Less than a fortnight.  Twelve days.  How much had been crammed into them!

A kind of merry nightmare.  Things happened.  There was something bright and diabolical in the tone of the place, something kaleidoscopic—­a frolicsome perversity.  Purifying, at the same time.  It swept away the cobwebs.  It gave you a measure, a standard, whereby to compute earthly affairs.  Another landmark passed; another milestone on the road to enlightenment.  That period of doubt was over.  His values had righted themselves.  He had carved out new and sound ones; a workable, up-to-date theory of life.  He was in fine trim.  His liver—­he forgot that he ever had one.  Nepenthe had done him good all round.  And he knew exactly what he wanted.  A return to the Church, for example, was out of the question.  His sympathies had outgrown the ideals of that establishment; a wave of pantheistic benevolence had drowned its smug little teachings.  The Church of England!  What was it still good for?  A stepping-stone, possibly towards something more respectable and humane; a warning to all concerned of the folly of idolizing dead men and their delusions.  The Church?  Ghosts!

His thoughts wandered to England.  Often had he sighed, in Africa, for its drowsy verdant opulence—­those willow-fringed streamlets and grazing cattle, the smell of hay, the flowery lanes, the rooks cawing among slumberous elms; often had he thought of that village on the hill-top with its grey steeple.  Well, he would see them all in a few days.  And how would England compare with the tingling realism of Nepenthe?  Rather parochial, rather dun; grey-in-grey; subdued light above—­crepuscular emotions on earth.  Everything fireproof, seaworthy.  Kindly thoughts expressed in safe unvarying formulas.  A guileless people!  Ships tossing at sea; minds firmly anchored to the commonplace.  Abundance for the body; diet for the spirit.  The monotony of a nation intent upon respecting laws and customs.  Horror of the tangent, the extreme, the unconventional.  God save the King.