‘Well, you don’t know what may not be happening to them,’ Sydney, emerging from her detachment, felt it necessary to point out instructively. The road, a favourite promenade of the natives and visitors, rounded the face of a high embankment; they could have been looked down upon from the terraces of villas on one hand, while on the other they were level with the tree-tops: the roofs of the town were below. Milton, distractingly engaged in conversation by Cordelia, and Sydney, released but not unfriendly, looking ahead of her, they emerged on to a gravelled plateau overlooking the sea. Here some seats had been placed, under umbrella pines forming a kind of pergola, to promote contemplation of the bright panorama of coast. Beyond, the remoter hills were still snow-capped; others ran down to the sea in a succession of fine blue noses; headland behind headland fading towards France. The earth had this brilliant morning a kind of independent luminousness; there were still no shadows anywhere and the rocks, flat clustered roofs and campanili seemed to shed light as well as to receive it. For miles the bright-blue swelling glassiness of the sea received the coast gracefully among ripples that frayed continually into foam, slipped back into themselves, and slid on again. When Sydney, Mr Milton and Cordelia had seated themselves on a bench, the fleshy spears of some cacti fringing the plateau darkly occupied the foreground of their vision. ‘Ah!’ said Milton, taking a deep breath of the air which here seemed to him stronger and fresher. Sydney was glad of his enjoyment of the day which to herself still seemed to be spilt out wastefully.

‘Doesn’t everything look as though it was cut out and painted?’ exclaimed Cordelia, joyously swinging her legs.

‘Cordelia!’ said Milton, looking at her with an air of inspiration, ‘do you like nuts?’

‘Very much. But I get plenty of them.’

‘Or figs?’

‘The seeds are bad for any teeth.’

‘Well, dates?’

‘I adore dates. I’m not encouraged to eat them much because they’re stickies. But I do adore dates,’ said Cordelia thoughtfully. ‘I wonder if I shall ever eat a date again?’

‘You may at any moment,’ said Milton, and he told her that there was a little fruit-shop that he knew of, just below, where she could buy for the three lire he proposed to give her enough dates for them all. ‘I adore dates, too,’ he added. ‘The shop is on the left, by the tram-terminus, and they will talk any language you like.’ He gave the child a slight push that was unnecessary, for she was already sliding off the bench. After a side-glance at Sydney, who had opened her mouth to protest, she fled to some concrete steps and with a yelp of excitement vanished down them.