His eye strayed into the courtyard and moved about the green penumbra
created by the fig tree's massy foliage; it glanced over fragments of
statuary half buried under a riot of leaves and nodding flowers, and
rested with complaisance upon the brickwork flooring of herring-bone
pattern, coloured in a warm, velvety Indian-red. It was worn down here
and there by tread of feet, and pleasantly marked with patches of
emerald-green moss and amber-tinted streaks of light that played about
its surface wherever the sunbeams could pierce the dense leafage
overhead.
From where he sat he could see the Locri Faun on its pedestal. The
figure was drowned in twilight. It seemed to slumber.
Meanwhile Andrea, looking uncommonly ceremonious in white tie and white
cotton globes, was handing round the coffee. It was pronounced an
unqualified success. "Absolutely harmonious," declared the bishop, who
had no hesitation, after a critical sip or two, in extending his
approval to a curiously flavoured liqueur of unknown ingredients.
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