about the hut pecked some white pigeons, and from it, startling me
foolishly with its unexpected sound, came the eerie bleat of her pet
goat.... Among the olives it was twilight already, with streakings of
faded rose in the sky, and faded rose, like long trails of petals, on
the distant sea. I clambered down among the myrtle-bushes and came to a
little semicircle of yellow sand, between two high and jagged rocks,
the place where the sea had deposited Dionea after the wreck. She was
seated there on the sand, her bare foot dabbling in the waves; she had
twisted a wreath of myrtle and wild roses on her black, crisp hair.
Near her was one of our prettiest girls, the Lena of Sor Tullio the
blacksmith, with ashy, terrified face under her flowered kerchief. I
determined to speak to the child, but without startling her now, for
she is a nervous, hysteric little thing. So I sat on the rocks,
screened by the myrtle-bushes, waiting till the girl had gone. Dionea,
seated listless on the sands, leaned over the sea and took some of its
water in the hollow of her hand. "Here," she said to the Lena of Sor
Tullio, "fill your bottle with this and give it to drink to Tommasino
the Rosebud." Then she set to singing:--

"Love is salt, like sea-water--I drink and I die of thirst.... Water!
water! Yet the more I drink, the more I burn. Love! thou art bitter as
the seaweed."

_April 20, 1887._

Your friends are settled here, dear Lady Evelyn. The house is built in
what was once a Genoese fort, growing like a grey spiked aloes out of
the marble rocks of our bay; rock and wall (the walls existed long
before Genoa was ever heard of) grown almost into a homogeneous mass,
delicate grey, stained with black and yellow lichen, and dotted here