Page:Claire Ambler (1928).djvu/92

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III.

MR. CHARLES ORBISON might well have been asked if a gentleman wholly mystified by a young lady's mind could be expected to understand her sentimentally; his impulsive diagnosis of what filled the heart of Miss Claire Ambler in Raona was mistaken.

As she sat with Arturo Liana upon the green iron bench looking out upon the classic sea where Greek had fought Greek, and Roman triremes had met Carthaginian galleys, the girl of twenty-one did indeed thrill with romance; but not with a romance particularly concerned with the young gentleman beside her. Neither was the thrill she felt caused by the tremendous history of the spot where she sat, though she knew that in their flesh Plato, the Apostle Paul, Mark Antony, and Cicero had looked upon it; and, in majestic legend, so had Trojan fugitives. Near at hand, upon her right, the groves of the Cyclops climbed the buttresses of the snow-mantled volcano that rose two miles into the air like a god's prodigious tent pitched at the edge of the sea; and,