It is the terrace of the Villa Politi. They have finally forgiven the villa, and have climbed up here from the Latomia to sit on its lovely terrace, to drink tea and eat the honey of Hybla, to look down on one side into the blossom-hung depths of the Athenians’ 177prison, on the other out to the mauve and silver of the twilight sea. “Peripatetica,” says Jane with great firmness, “I am suffering from an indigestion of history. I am going away somewhere. All these spirits of the past block up the place so that I’ve no freedom of movement. It’s an oppression to feel that every time one puts a foot down it’s in the track of thousands and thousands of dead feet, and that one’s stirring up the dust of bones with every step we take. Everything we look at is covered so thick with layer on layer of passion and pain that I’ve got an historic heartache. I leave to-morrow.” Peripatetica didn’t answer at first. She was looking out over the dusky sea, from which breathed a soft slow wind. The change had come while they were in the Latomia; had come suddenly. That bleak unkindness in the atmosphere—of which they were always conscious even in the sun—had all at once disappeared. Even though the sun was gone a mild sweetness seemed to exhale from the earth, as from a heart at last content. “Jane,” said Peripatetica, turning shining eyes upon her, “Persephone has returned. Let us go to Enna and meet her!” 178 CHAPTER IV   The Return of Persephone “God’s three chief gifts, Man’s bread and oil and wine.” No doubt the usual things that happen to travellers happened to Jane and Peripatetica at Enna-Castrogiovanni, and on their way to it. Things annoying and amusing, tiresome or delightful, but they have no memory of these things, all lesser matters having been swallowed up in the final satisfaction of their quest.