and so she settled down once more, to turn her attention upon the river.

Soon a narrow, black barge slid into view, its prow cutting into the opaque, green water like a chisel into jade. On the deck, a man draped in loose-fitting robes lounged on his side, looking into the river. The waves beside the boat suddenly parted, and the head and shoulders of a young man rose into view on the surface. As he gazed up, with the water running over his chest and his golden hair luminous in the light from the barge, he might have been a lesser river deity. He extended his hand in a graceful movement to the man on the barge. The other smiled and reached out also. Their fingers briefly touched before the craft had slipped past and was lost in the night. As the young man. sank silently down into the water, Domenica was again conscious of the faint laughter of the waves.

Slowly, she raised the upper part of her body on aching arms and glanced about. In her mind's eye she could see herself the yellow hair tangling down her back, the tense white curve of her torso surmounted by the gigantic arc of her wings, and the whole form silhouetted against a sky filled with alien constellations.

Domenica was startled from her dreams by the brilliant persistence of mid-morning sunlight. Traditionally an early riser, she slipped quickly from her bed with a sense of loss. As she drew on a dressing-gown of fine white cotton, and tied the long sash at her waist, she silently chided herself that Tony had arisen, and had in all probability already breakfasted. The thought of Tony recalled the events of the previous evening. Gravely, she walked to the open casement and commenced to subdue the disarray of her hair with a silver brush. She idly reviewed her dreams and wondered what purpose wings could serve that prohibited flight and hindered walking. With a little shrug to assure herself that her shoulders had returned to their accustomed pinionless state, she discarded the dream as barely worth remembering.

Even the recollection of Adrian seemed inconsequential as she descended the staircase. The sunlight flowed through the French windows, and the parlor, built in a perfect hexagon and set with so many mirrors and glass cases, glittered in the morning like a marvellous prism.

She discovered Tony sitting cross-legged on the library floor. "What are you reading?"

She sat beside him and took the volume from his hands. How many afternoons they had spent together in the library two serious children discovering new wonders in the crisp pages of old books, or listening in studied concentration to the turns, mordants and trills of baroque music on a wind-up phonograph. In time, when the first fascination of the library had worn thin, it was Domenica alone who lingered to appreciate the dry, sensual texture of old leather and parchment, and the astringent beauty of Corelli, Couperin and Scarlatti. Tony had turned to the diversity of nature, which offered an unending array of marvels without compelling his imagination to substitute depth for breadth.

But this morning time had gone awry, and she was sitting on the library floor with her brother again, their hands mutually smudged with the warm dust from an old book.

"I'm reading all about Antinous."

"What on earth prompted that?" The misgivings of the day before returned. She tried to dismiss them by lightly touseling her brother's hair. He looked at her with a smile.

"He was showing me the constellation of Antinous last night. It was very funny you know how it is when one person tries to show another person a constellation, and the other person just can't see it. . . ?"

He watched her earnestly, expecting a sympathetic smile.

So it was "Adrian" no longer; it was just "he." To begin with, this firstname nonsense, and then no need for any name at all. She drew away from Tony slightly.

"Yes, go on."

"Well, of course I couldn't make it out; you know me

one

but I was interest-