On the last day of the old year they climbed up through the olives until they reached an open grassy space starred thick with the tigered buff and mauve blooms of a myriad crocuses, the saffron stamens of which burned like little tongues of fire in the sunlight. “Forgive the melancholy platitude,” said Kenrick, “but I am oppressed by the thought of our transience here, and not only our transience, but the transience of all the tourists who sojourn for a while on this magic coast. The song of a poet here is already less than the warble of a passing bird; the moonlight is more powerful than all the vows of all who have ever loved in Sorrento; no music can endure beside the murmur of the Tyrrhenian. ‘Here could I live,’ one protests, and in a day or two the railway-guide is pulled out, and one is discussing with the hotel porter how to fit in Pompeii on the way back to Naples. Ugh! What is it that forbids man to be happy?” “Well, obviously most of the people who visit Sorrento couldn’t afford to stay here indefinitely,” said Nancy, who always felt extremely matter-of-fact when her companion began to talk in this strain. “Yes, but there must be many people like myself who could.” “Some do.” “Ah, but not in the right way. They dig out a house-agent and inspect eligible villas and behave exactly as if they were moving from Bayswater to Hampstead, which in fact they are. I don’t want to adjust these surroundings to myself. I want to become an integral part of them. I should like to stay on in the _Albergo del Sole_ without writing letters or getting letters. I should like to be sitting here when these crocuses have faded, and the grass is wine-stained by anemones or silvery with asphodels. I should like to watch the cistus petals fluttering to the hot earth, and to lie for hours listening to the cicali, lie and dream all through the Summer as still and hot as a terra-cotta shard, lie and dream until the black sirocco whips the orchards and spits into my face the first drops of autumn rain. But if I had to make arrangements for my business and explain that my nerves required a long rest, all the savour would be taken out of my whim. Oh, _dio_, I am as full to-day of yearnings for the _au delà_ as a French symbolist, or a callow German who sees the end of his _Wanderjahre_ looming.” All the way back to the town Kenrick walked along beside Nancy in a moody silence. She felt that perhaps she had been too discouraging, and just before they emerged from the last of the olives she put a hand on his arm and said: “Will it do anything to console you if I tell you how perfectly I have enjoyed these days here? I’m not an eloquent person, Mr. Kenrick.” “Oh, for heaven’s sake call me John. Haven’t you noticed I’ve been calling you Nancy all this time?”