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dinner beforehand. The food was good, for Antonio was an excellent
cook, and the wine came from his own vineyard. It was so light that
you felt you could drink it like water and we finished the first bottle
with our macaroni. By the time we had finished the second we felt
that there was nothing much wrong with life. We sat in a little garden
under a great vine laden with grapes. The air was exquisitely soft.
The night was still and we were alone. The maid brought us bel paese
cheese and a plate of figs. I ordered coffee and strega, which is the
best liqueur they make in Italy. Wilson would not have a cigar, but lit
his pipe.
"We've got plenty of time before we need start," he said, "the
moon won't be over the hill for another hour."
"Moon or no moon," I said briskly, "of course we've got plenty
of time. That's one of the delights of Capri, that there's never any
hurry."
"Leisure," he said. "If people only knew! It's the most priceless
thing a man can have and they're such fools they don't even know it's
something to aim at. Work? They work for work's sake. They haven't
got the brains to realise that the only object of work is to obtain
leisure."
Wine has the effect on some people of making them indulge in
general reflections. These remarks were true, but no one could have
claimed that they were original. I did not say anything, but struck a
match to light my cigar.
"It was full moon the first time I came to Capri," he went on
reflectively. "It might be the same moon as to-night."
"It was, you know," I smiled.
He grinned. The only light in the garden was what came from
an oil lamp that hung over our heads. It had been scanty to eat by, but
it was good now for confidences.
"I didn't mean that. I mean, it might be yesterday. Fifteen years
it is, and when I look back it seems like a month. I'd never been to
Italy before. I came for my summer holiday. I went to Naples by boat
from Marseilles and I had a look round, Pompeii, you know, and
Paestum and one or two places like that; then I came here for a week.
I liked the look of the place right away, from the sea, I mean, as I
watched it come closer and closer; and then when we got into the
little boats from the steamer and landed at the quay, with all that
crowd of jabbering people who wanted to take your luggage, and the