A long silence enfolded them. She nestled close to him. "I am tired,--very tired," she crooned, as a child about to fall asleep. "Francesco, help me to forget the years! I am afraid!" "Afraid?" "Of myself! Sometimes I dare not be alone at night! No,--no,--it is not that! The inner darkness! There is no weeping there,--only silence,--silence,--and the gathering gloom!" She held his hands in her own. "But for this," she cried with passionate pressure, "I should long have cursed God and died--" Her voice died away in the empty stillness without response. "It is peace I crave," she said wearily, "a peace, such as broods over a sunset world!" "The peace of a dying day!" he replied. "The peace I seek is of a day that stoops not to evening." "And this peace,--have you found it?" Her eyes were fixed gravely on his own. "I am as one who gropes in twilight by a path half seen, towards a goal he does not know. Not for me the peace of the goal! But there is peace also of the quest: a peace I would not forego!" They had arisen and walked for a time in silence, seeking the remoter regions of the garden. The softened siesta lights gave to the distant hills an aspect of pearl and jasper. It was drawing towards sunset; red banners streaked the amethyst of the western sky. A saffron mist enveloped the curves of Vesuvius, shot with gold and crimson, merging in dusky purple. In the plains the fertile fields reclaimed round the base of Castiglioné gleamed russet with vines, gray with olives. Beyond the grim walls of distant Astura stretched the chalk-lands of Torre del Greco. As they walked side by side, Francesco felt the rhythmic life in Dana's body. The wan, appealing face was close to his. An instant, and the passion of the sky leaped into it. Theirs was the calm of a still pool, which hovers till the wind breaks it into the myriad agitations of life. He drew her towards him; her head resting on his shoulder, as if there she had found a home. The evening star shone out in the fading sky. The dusk was travelling towards the night. Creation shivered towards a deeper dream. The summer moon had risen, shedding its magic light over the Gulf of Naples. The very soul of Francesco was thrilled by the harmony around him; the harmony in the moon's golden trail, which fell upon the waters, a blazing path, reaching from Posilippo to the rim of the horizon, harmony in the soft murmur of the sea, and the light breeze which carried, together with the salt freshness of the sea-air, sweet perfumes from the shores of Sorento with their lemon and orange groves; harmony in the silvery curves of Vesuvius, wrapped in luminous mists, its rugged cone emitting a white smoke, which trailed along the upper zones of the air, the summit of the mountain flaring up from time to time, like dying embers consecrated to the gods, the gods who had died, had risen again, and had again expired.