‘I really thought it had not been half an hour,’ she said.

Then, as if to make him look at the scene, she swept her hand round the immense circumference of the view. From the sea, over the roofs of the town, across the crests of the mountains, over the river and the plain, and again across the crests of the mountains it swept until it reached the villa, the garden, the magnolia–tree, and the figures of Hirst and herself standing together, when it dropped to her side.