As he went along by the stables, a friendly lancer,
pitying him, probably, too, wearying of his own lonely watch, called to
him, and offered him a drink out of a stone bottle. Gregorio drank again
feverishly, and handed the bottle back to its owner with a grin, and
passed on without a word. The soldier watched him curiously, but said
nothing.
When he reached the lighthouse Gregorio flung himself on to the
pebble-strewn sand and looked across the bay. The blue water, calm and
unruffled as a sheet of glass, spread before him. The ships--Austrian
Lloyd mail-boats, P. and O. liners, and grimy coal-hulks--lay motionless
against the white side of the jetty.
The khedive's yacht was bright with bunting, and innumerable
fishing-boats near the breakwater made grateful oases in the glare
whereon his eyes might rest. But he heeded them not. Angrily he flung
lumps of stone and sand into the wavelets at his feet, and pushed back
his hat that his face might feel the full heat of the sun. Then he lit a
cigarette and began to think.
But what was the good of thinking? The thoughts always formed themselves
into the same chain and reached the same conclusion; and ever on the
glassy surface of the Levantine sea a woman poised herself and laughed
at him.
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