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 unique, and valued as a luck-bringer. She says that she has a "pocket-piece" for each one of her most intimate friends in New York. Judging by the provision made, the name of these intimates must be legion. Apart from her opinion, however, I humbly venture to think that Catania has its points, if only people stopped long enough to see them, which they don't, Catania being the Basle of Sicily—the place of departure for somewhere else. In our case the somewhere else was Syracuse.

Now the Goddess had been looking forward to Siracusa; I'm not sure that she was not by way of regarding her whole past as working slowly up to a sight of that place, since she had come to think of it. She had made up her royal mind to stop there some time, dreaming in the quarries where the seven thousand Greeks languished in captivity while the Siracusan beauties, under red umbrellas, derided or brazenly admired them. She had, so to speak, made a note of Dionysius' Ear, and the Greek and Roman theatres, and already she had bought a photograph of a strange, Dante-esque den in the rocks which resembled Hades and was called Paradise. She planned an excursion up the little river Anapo to see the papyrus, and the deep blue pool of jewelled fish at the source; and there were various drives and walks which, she thought, would keep her at the Villa Politi at least a week. But, on my part, I was equally determined that she should not stop an hour over the two days I had grudgingly allotted her. Not that I wasn't interested in Siracusa; I was, intensely, but I was and am a good deal more