So their affection for each other put out reaching, groping fingers through the glooming mists of pain that blinded each. As yet that touch could not heal: but it seemed to wait its hour. Tommy returned to his drawing. Betty sought for and gathered up the coins from the stone floor. Their copper jingling seemed to ring in her soul dully. The beastly thing--to use Tommy's phrase--was that one must oneself throw one's bright metal away. Though it might burn to the touch, the flinging of it away was a wrenching that hurt more. Betty envied Tommy, with the bitterness of his down-bent face before her; her bitterness must of necessity be the deeper, because her bright metal had been laid in her hands, to keep if she would. Also, to throw it away had bruised and hurt not her alone.... Betty's thin, scarred hand covered her lips, steadying them. 'We shall be better soon,' she said to herself. 'We'll play in the streets and smell the sea ... and summer's coming.... We shall be better soon.' Then she sought a narcotic in literature, and got from the shelf a book of poetry and began to read: 'When you are out alone I hope You will not meet the antelope....' The Crevequers used often to cheer themselves with that book when they were in low spirits. But to-night it did not seem efficacious. Betty supposed she knew it too well; she could think as she read, which was not desirable. So she turned to fiction, and read 'Sea Urchins.' The church clocks struck ten. Tommy, holding his sketch from him, said, 'How damned bad!' and tore it abruptly in two, muttering, 'Muzzi would if I didn't.' Then he got up and said, 'It's stifling in here. I shall go out.' He went out. Betty, her hand over her shaking lips, muttered, 'Poor Tommy--oh, poor Tommy! We've no luck at all, he and I.' She was aware how he must have faced things, and how once more they stood at the same point. CHAPTER IX FURNACE FLAMES 'Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura Questa selva selvaggia ed aspra è forte, Che nel pensier rinnova la paura! Tanto è amara, che poco è più morte: Ma per trattar del ben ch' ivi trovai, Dirò dell' altre cose, ch' io v' ho scorte.' DANTE. Beneath the hail of black dust and fiery ashes that blew in gusts from Vesuvius across the bay, Tommy Crevequer screwed his eyes and tilted his straw hat forwards and drew, getting an excellent view, if not of Vesuvius, which was blotted in brown mist, at any rate of the population who thronged the harbour, and of the way in which they received their impressions. Foreigners--never-failing game--were much in evidence, a North German Lloyd having recently arrived; there were also the Sindaco, and various other celebrities. The artist of _Marchese Peppino_ made them seem rather funny. It was the first morning after the breaking out of the eruption, and interest everywhere was vivid. Journalists recorded their impressions with smarting eyes.