She
went down and knocked at the stateroom door; but Amy would not answer.
She called her softly through the key-hole, and coaxed and pleaded, but
it was all in vain. Amy remained invisible till late in the afternoon;
and when she finally crept up again to the deck, her eyes were red with
crying, and her little face as pale and miserable as if she had been
attending the funeral of her dearest friend.
Katy's heart smote her.
"Come here, my darling," she said, holding out her hand; "come and sit
in my lap and forgive me. Violet and Emma shall not be dead. They shall
go on living, since you care so much for them, and I will tell stories
about them to the end of the chapter."
"No," said Amy, shaking her head mournfully; "you can't. They're dead,
and they won't come to life again ever. It's all over, and I'm so
so-o-rry."
All Katy's apologies and efforts to resuscitate the story were useless.
Violet and Emma were dead to Amy's imagination, and she could not make
herself believe in them any more.
She was too woe-begone to care for the fables of Circe and her swine
which Katy told as they rounded the magnificent Cape Circello, and the
isles where the sirens used to sing appealed to her in vain. The sun
set, the stars came out; and under the beams of their countless lamps
and the beckonings of a slender new moon, the "Marco Polo" sailed into
the Bay of Naples, past Vesuvius, whose dusky curl of smoke could be
seen outlined against the luminous sky, and brought her passengers to
their landing-place.
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