He stood up, breathless, as if stunned; yet with heavy understanding he had grasped what had occurred before his eyes. The noonday ghost hour was over, and in the form of a butterfly, a winged messenger had come up from the asphodel meadows of Hades to admonish the departed one to return. For him something else was associated with this, although in confused indistinctness. He knew that the beautiful butterfly of Mediterranean countries bore the name Cleopatra, and this had also been the name of Caledonian Meleager’s young wife who, in grief over his death, had given herself as sacrifice to those of the lower world. From his mouth issued a call to the girl who was departing, “Are you coming here again to-morrow in the noon hour?” Yet she did not turn around, gave no answer, and disappeared after a few moments in the corner of the dining-room behind the pillar. Now a compelling impulse suddenly incited him to hasten after her, but her bright dress was no longer visible anywhere; glowing with the hot sun’s rays, the Casa di Meleagro lay about him motionless and silent; only Cleopatra hovered on her red, shimmering, golden wings, making slow circles again above the multitude of poppies. * * * * * When and how he had returned to the “ingresso,” Norbert Hanold could not recall; in his memory he retained only the idea that his appetite had peremptorily demanded to be appeased, though very tardily, at the “Diomed,” and then he had wandered forth aimlessly on the first good street, had arrived at the beach north of Castellamare, where he had seated himself on a lava-block, and the sea-wind had blown around his head until the sun had set about half-way between Monte Sant’ Angelo above Sorrento and Monte Epomeo on Ischia. Yet, in spite of this stay of at least several hours by the water, he had obtained from the fresh air there no mental relief, but was returning to the hotel in the same condition in which he had left it. He found the other guests busily occupied with dinner, had a little bottle of Vesuvio wine brought to him in a corner of the room, viewed the faces of those eating, and listened to their conversations. From the faces of all, as well as from their talk, it appeared to him absolutely certain that in the noon hour none of them had either met or spoken to a dead Pompeiian woman who had returned again briefly to life. Of course, all this had been a foregone conclusion, as they had all been at lunch at that time; why and wherefore, he himself could not state, yet after a while he went over to the competitor of the “Diomed,” “Hotel Suisse,” sat down there also in a corner, and, as he had to order something, likewise before a little bottle of Vesuvio, and here he gave himself over to the same kind of investigations with eye and ear. They led to the same results but also to the further conclusion that he now knew by sight all the temporary, living visitors of Pompeii.