PART FIFTH




I


It was Sunday. It was early morning. It was raining,--a fine quiet,
determined rain, that blurred the lower reaches of the valley, and
entirely hid the mountain-tops, so that one found it hard not to doubt a
little whether they were still there. Near at hand the garden was as if
a thin web of silver had been cast over it, pale and dim, where wet
surfaces reflected the diffused daylight. And just across the Rampio, on
the olive-clad hillside that rose abruptly from its brink, rather an
interesting process was taking place,--the fabrication of clouds, no
less. The hillside, with its rondure of blue-grey foliage, would lie for
a moment quite bare and clear; then, at some high point, a mist would
begin to form, would appear indeed to issue from the earth, as smoke
from a subterranean fire, white smoke with pearly shadows; would thicken
and spread out; would draw together and rise in an irregular spiral
column, curling, swaying, poising, as if uncertain what to do next; and
at last, all at once making up its mind, (how like a younker or a
prodigal!), would go sailing away, straggling away, amorphous, on a puff
of wind, leaving the hillside clear again;--till, presently, the process
would recommence _da capo_.

John and Annunziata, seated together on a marble bench in the shelter of
the great cloister, with its faded frescoes, at the north-eastern