“Calabria and Sicily flagellated by earthquake. Enormous damage. Towns in ruins, many dead and wounded. A tidal wave on the coast of Sicily,” such were the headlines of the first editions. Later came the dreadful news: “Messina and Reggio destroyed!” In the Corso I met Athol. He had been very ill in bed but had struggled out to do his duty, to weigh the news, sift truth from rumor, flash the dreadful tidings to the earth’s end. “How much must we believe?” I asked him. “Such reports are always exaggerated at first,” he answered. We soon learned the first reports did not begin to tell the story. “Earthquake? It is the end of the world!” people said to each other. As rumor grew to certainty, fear to dreadful fact, the effect upon our minds was very curious; nothing that concerned our private affairs seemed of any consequence. This was equally true of our friends, most of whom were like ourselves, foreigners in Italy. The day after the dinner party I dropped into Vera’s studio. The Signorina had not come in, Beppino, the model, told me; he had never known such a thing happen before. The clay was dry and greatly in need of being dampened. He was forbidden to lift the sheet that covered the statue and dared not do so. If I were not afraid?-- Afraid? What did it matter? I committed the unpardonable sin, stripped off the sheet, and with the big syringe wetted down the grey clay of that statue of Vera’s we had all been so curious about. Her well-kept secret was before me, but I only know that it was a female figure, whether a Psyche or a Niobe I neither knew or cared, nor whether it was good, bad, or indifferent. Vera had only a week to finish the statue that was to compete for the prize she had strained every nerve to win. Three times I wetted down the clay for my friend; after that I forgot it and the statue fell to pieces. Vera had other work to do, and so had I. We ourselves were at rather an important juncture in our lives. J. had just finished his decorative painting, Diana of the Tides, for the Smithsonian Institute in Washington; he was on the point of sending out cards for his exhibition. All this was swept into the background of our thoughts. We lived only for tidings of the South. All day long we could only speak, only think of Calabria and Sicily. At night we only slept to dream of them, to wake from the terror of the nightmare to the greater terror of the reality, and then to sleep painfully again. A feverish desire to do something, to be of some use, seemed to drive us and all the Americans and English we saw. Inaction became intolerable; we were scourged by pity and sorrow into some sort of doing, whether it was of any use or not.