There it was,
and on the other side the shore on which Carthage used to stand; there
it was, a blue bay with long red hills reaching out, reminding me of
hills I had seen somewhere, I think in a battle piece by Salvator
Rosa. It seemed to me that I had seen those hills before--no, not in a
picture; had I dreamed them, or was there some remembrance of a
previous existence struggling in my brain? There was a memory
somewhere, a broken memory, and I sought for the lost thread as well
as I could, for Doris rarely ceased talking.
"And there is the restaurant," she said, flinging up her parasol,
"built at the end of those rocks."
We were the first swallows to arrive; the flocks would not be here for
about three weeks. So we had the restaurant to ourselves, the waiter
and doubtless the cook; and they gave us all their attention. Would we
have breakfast in the glass pavilion? How shall I otherwise describe
it, for it seemed to be all glass? The scent of the sea came through
the window, and the air was like a cordial--it intoxicated; and
looking across the bay one seemed to be looking on the very thing that
Whistler had sought for in his Nocturnes, and that Steer had nearly
caught in that picture of children paddling, that dim, optimistic blue
that allures and puts the world behind one, the dream of the
opium-eater, the phrase of the syrens in "Tannhaeuser," the phrase
which begins like a barcarolle; but the accompaniment tears underneath
until we thrill with expectation.
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