When once the sluices of sleep were raised, memories began to pour through, and he let them flow as they would without direction. He had come here first only two years ago with his father, and instantly his Italian blood had initiated him into the magic of the South; the lizards basking on the walls, the grey olives, the stone pines, the steep cobbled ways were as home-like, even when he saw them for the first time, as the thrushes that scudded across the lawn at Stanier, and the yew-hedge and the lake. Of course his father’s presence, and his father’s devotion to him, had been tedious at times, but he had borne that very indulgently. Then he had come here with Violet on his honeymoon, and here she had begun to learn something of his real nature, and that cold terror she had of him, which so inexplicably existed side by side with her love, had first laid a finger on her. Strange, to think how that hand of ice had never frozen her love, nor squeezed it out of her heart.... And then he had come here a third time, after Raymond had been drowned, but had stayed here only one night, for waiting him--welcoming him?--was the telegram to say his father was dead. He had not wanted his father to die exactly: he was quite content to wait a few years yet, but how his heart had leaped to know that already, while he was not yet of age, his great inheritance had come to him. Surely Capri was a lucky spot for him: yet was there, where he was concerned, such a thing as luck? Luck, as it was generally understood, was a fitful visitor, with rare capricious advents, and long absences. But with him it abided always. Colin yawned, till the whole half-circle of his milk-white teeth was disclosed, with his tongue lying like a curved rose-leaf between them, and when his mouth closed again, it closed into a smile. He slewed himself off his bed, and barefooted stepped across the cool tiled floor to the next room where tea was waiting for him. This siesta through the hot hours of the afternoon, when it was impossible to go out, made two days out of each twenty-four hours; you awoke as to another morning, with body refreshed and brain alert. Already the sea breeze was stirring, and the westering sun was off the front of the house, and presently, cup in hand, he strolled across to the window, and pushed back the closed green-slatted shutters, which had kept the room cool during the heat. In came the flooding freshness, spiced with sea, and chasing before it the stagnant air of the house which had been darkened against the tropic blaze of the noon. It heralded the approach of the caressing Italian evening and the star-sown night.