and vigorous girls assailed her--the desire to be a boy; not a boy
born of rich parents, destined to the idle, aimless life of
aristocratic young Neapolitans, but a brown, badly dressed, or
scarcely dressed at all boy of the people.

She was often light-hearted, careless. But was she ever as light-
hearted and careless as that singing boy? She supposed herself to be
free. But was she, could she ever be at liberty as he was?

The man who had been dipping his feet in the sea rested one hand on
the gunwale, let his body droop forward, dropped into the water,
paddled for a moment, reached one of the floating corks, turned over
head downwards, describing a circle which showed his chocolate-colored
back arched, kicked up his feet and disappeared. The second man
lounged lazily from the boat into the sea and imitated him. The boy
sat still and went on singing. Vere felt disappointed. Was not he
going to dive too? She wanted him to dive. If she were that boy she
would go in, she felt sure of it, before the men. It must be lovely to
sink down into the underworld of the sea, to rifle from the rocks
their fruit, that grew thick as fruit on the trees. But the boy--he
was lazy, good for nothing but singing. She was half ashamed of him.
Whimsically, and laughing to herself at her own absurdity, she lifted
her two hands, brown with the sun, to her lips, and cried with all her
might:

"Va dentro, pigro! Va dentro!"

As her voice died away, the boy stopped singing, sprang into the sea,
kicked up his feet and disappeared.