'So I was given to understand,' he said. 'I was told that they, being so much the same sort, wanted no other companionship. The combination of either with anyone else, it seemed, would not work--would be a disastrous fiasco, in fact.' Prudence acknowledged his right to his bitterness, the hurt being still so new and sore, his anger with himself going so deep. But she said, after a moment, pleading, 'Don't grudge them that. For, do you see, it's about all they've got left,' and so ended, with wet eyes. CHAPTER XIII PINE-BARK BOATS 'I thenke forto touche also The world which neweth every dai, So as I can, so as I mai.' JOHN GOWER. 'Earth loves her young: a preference manifest.' GEORGE MEREDITH. A dozen or so of the Crevequers' friends came down to the harbour to see them off to Santa Caterina. The Crevequers leaned over the rail of the crowded launch, which was bearing them out to the _König Albrecht_, and waved their hands and stammered good-bye to every one. Tommy was very weak and wan, and carried one arm in a sling; he had been out of hospital for just a week. That week they had spent in selling most of their effects, wringing out of their various debtors, with much exertion, some of the money owed them, and raising in the end quite a creditable sum, with which they paid their extensive debts and booked their passage by sea, and finally, having a little over, asked about a dozen of their most intimate friends to a supper-party at the Trattoria Pallino, on the Vomero. There, last night, they had said good-bye. Last night had been full of regrets--the sadness of parting, the pathos of a merry company broken--a pathos hidden in jests, yet oppressive, nevertheless, in the blue May twilight. They had sat beneath the hanging purple veil of the wistaria, and the sweetness of the May roses had mingled with the blue fragrance of the Tuscan cigars to which Tommy had recklessly risen, and through the sweetness and the fragrance the salt keenness of the sea had pierced, and its washing edge had whispered a soft undertone to the city sounds that rang up through the still evening air. They had looked down and seen how the spreading city far below bloomed like a great rose of many colours in the soft falling twilight; how the sky and the sea were still delicately flushed with the afterglow; how, above the flattened cone of Vesuvius, a great yellow moon swung up into the blue still east. It had looked upon the city with a large, mellow charity, softly touching its many colours, deepening the steep shadows of the streets that ran through it like gorges. It had laid a broad yellow path for itself across the blue spaces of the evening sea, and so twilight had deepened tenderly to night.