How did they feel about the sea? To her the sea was romantic and
personal. Was it romantic and personal to them? They were romantic to
her because of their connection with the sea, which had imprinted upon
them something of itself, showed forth in them, by means of them,
something surely of its own character; but probably, almost certainly,
she supposed, they were unconscious of this. They lived by the sea.
Perhaps they thought of it as of a vast money-bag, into which they
dipped their hands to get enough to live by. Or perhaps they thought
of it as an enemy, against which they lived in perpetual war, from
which they wrung, as it were at the sword's point, a poor and
precarious booty.

As she sat thinking about this Vere began to change in her desire, to
wish there were some fishermen out to-night about the islet, and that
she could have speech of them. She would like to find out from one of
them how they regarded the sea.

She smiled as she imagined a conversation between herself and some
strong, brown, wild Neapolitan, she questioning and he replying. How
he would misunderstand her! He would probably think her mad. And yet
sometimes the men of the sea in their roughness are imaginative. They
are superstitious. But a man--no, she could not question a man. Her
mind went to the boy diver, Ruffo. She had often thought about Ruffo
during the last three days. She had expected to see him again. He had
said nothing about returning to the islet, but she had felt sure he
would return, if only in the hope of being given some more cigarettes.
Boys in his position, she knew well, do not get a present of Khali
Targa cigarettes every day of the week. How happy he had looked when
he was smoking them! She remembered exactly the expression of his
brown face now, as she sat watching the empty, moonlit sea. It was not