"She can understand many things and she has read many books."

"But what is the good of that? Why should a girl read many books?"

"She is not a girl."

"Not a girl!"

She looked at him with amazed eyes and her voice was full of amazement.

"How old are you, signorino?" she asked.

"How old do you think?"

She considered him carefully for a long time.

"Old enough to make the visit," she said, at length.

"The visit?"

"Yes."

"What? Oh, do you mean to be a soldier?"

"Si, signore."

"That would be twenty, wouldn't it?"

She nodded.

"I am older than that. I am twenty-four."

"Truly?"

"Truly."

"And is the signora twenty-four, too?"

"Maddalena!" Maurice exclaimed, with a sudden impatience that was almost fierce. "Why do you keep on talking about the signora to-night? This is your festa. The signora is in Africa, a long way off—there—across the sea." He stretched out his arm, and pointed towards the wide waters above which the stars were watching. "When she comes back you can see her, if you wish—but now—"

"When is she coming back?" asked the girl.

There was an odd pertinacity in her character, almost an obstinacy, despite her young softness and gentleness.

"I don't know," Maurice said, with difficulty controlling his gathering impatience.

"Why did she go away?"

"To nurse some one who is ill."

"She went all alone across the sea?"

"Yes."

Maddalena turned and looked into the dimness of the sea with a sort of awe.

"I should be afraid," she said, after a pause.

And she shivered slightly.

Maurice had let go the oars again. He felt a longing to put his arm round her when he saw her shiver. The night created many longings in him, a confusion of longings, of which he was just becoming aware.

"You are a child," he said, "and have never been away from your 'paese.'"

"Yes, I have."

"Where?"

"I have been to the fair of San Felice."

He smiled.

"Oh—San Felice! And did you go in the train?"

"Oh no, signore. I went on a donkey. It was last year, in June. It was beautiful. There were women there in blue silk dresses with ear-rings as long as that"—she measured their length in the air with her brown fingers—"and there was a boy from Napoli, a real Napolitano, who sang and danced as we do not dance here. I was very happy that day. And I was given an image of Sant' Abbondio."

She looked at him with a sort of dignity, as if expecting him to be impressed.

"Carissima!" he whispered, almost under his breath.

Her little air of pride, as of a travelled person, enchanted him, even touched him, he scarcely knew why, as he had never been enchanted or touched by any London beauty.

"I wish I had been at the fair with you. I would have given you—"

"What, signorino?" she interrupted, eagerly.

"A blue silk dress and a pair of ear-rings longer—much longer—than those women wore."

"Really, signorino? Really?"

"Really and truly! Do you doubt me?"

"No."

She sighed.

"How I wish you had been there! But this year—"

She stopped, hesitating.

"Yes—this year?"

"In June there will be the fair again."

He moved from his seat, softly and swiftly, turned the boat's prow towards the open sea, then went and sat down by her in the stern.

"We will go there," he said, "you and I and Gaspare—"

"And my father."

"All of us together."

"And if the signora is back?"

Maurice was conscious of a desire that startled him like a sudden stab from something small and sharp—the desire that on that day Hermione should not be with him in Sicily.

"I dare say the signora will not be back."

"But if she is, will she come, too?"

"Do you think you would like it better if she came?"

He was so close to her now that his shoulder touched hers. Their faces were set seaward and were kissed by the breath of the sea. Their eyes saw the same stars and were kissed by the light of the stars. And the subtle murmur of the tide spoke to them both as if they were one.

"Do you?" he repeated. "Do you think so?"

"Chi lo sa?" she responded.

He thought, when she said that, that her voice sounded less simple than before.

"You do know!" he said.

She shook her head.

"You do!" he repeated.

He stretched out his hand and took her hand. He had to take it.

"Why don't you tell me?"

She had turned her head away from him, and now, speaking as if to the sea, she said:

"Perhaps if she was there you could not give me the blue silk dress and the—and the ear-rings. Perhaps she would not like it."

For a moment he thought he was disappointed by her answer. Then he knew that he loved it, for its utter naturalness, its laughable naivete. It seemed, too, to set him right in his own eyes, to sweep away a creeping feeling that had been beginning to trouble him. He was playing with a child. That was all. There was no harm in it. And when he had kissed her in the dawn he had been kissing a child, playfully, kindly, as a big brother might. And if he kissed her now it would mean nothing to her. And if it did mean something—just a little more—to him, that did not matter.

"Bambina mia!" he said.

"I am not a bambina," she said, turning towards him again.

"Yes you are."

"Then you are a bambino."

"Why not? I feel like a boy to-night, like a naughty little boy."

"Naughty, signorino?"

"Yes, because I want to do something that I ought not to do."

"What is it?"

"This, Maddalena."

And he kissed her. It was the first time he had kissed her in darkness, for on his second visit to the sirens' house he had only taken her hand and held it, and that was nothing. The kiss in the dawn had been light, gay, a sort of laughing good-bye to a kind hostess who was of a class that, he supposed, thought little of kisses. But this kiss in the night, on the sea, was different. Only when he had given it did he understand how different it was, how much more it meant to him. For Maddalena returned it gently with her warm young lips, and her response stirred something at his heart that was surely the very essence of the life within him.

He held her hands.

"Maddalena!" he said, and there was in his voice a startled sound. "Maddalena!"

Again Hermione had risen up before him in the night, almost as one who walked upon the sea. He was conscious of wrong-doing. The innocence of his relation with Maddalena seemed suddenly to be tarnished, and the happiness of the starry night to be clouded. He felt like one who, in summer, becomes aware of a heaviness creeping into the atmosphere, the message of a coming tempest that will presently transform the face of nature. Surely there was a mist before the faces of the stars.

She said nothing, only looked at him as if she wanted to know many things which only he could tell her, which he had begun to tell her. That was her fascination for his leaping youth, his wild heart of youth—this ignorance and this desire to know. He had sat in spirit at the feet of Hermione and loved her with a sort of boyish humbleness. Now one sat at his feet. And the attitude woke up in him a desire that was fierce in its intensity—the desire to teach Maddalena the great realities of love.

"Hi—yi—yi—yi—yi!"

Faintly there came to them a cry across the sea.

"Gaspare!" Maurice said.

He turned his head. In the darkness, high up, he saw a light, descending, ascending, then describing a wild circle.

"Hi—yi—yi—yi!"

"Row back, signorino! They have done playing, and my father will be angry."

He moved, took the oars, and sent the boat towards the island. The physical exertion calmed him, restored him to himself.

"After all," he thought, "there is no harm in it."

And he laughed.

"Which has won, Maddalena?" he said, looking back at her over his shoulder, for he was standing up and rowing with his face towards the land.

"I hope it is my father, signorino. If he has got the money he will not be angry; but if Gaspare has it—"

"Your father is a fox of the sea, and can cheat better than a boy. Don't be frightened."

When they reached the land, Salvatore and Gaspare met them. Gaspare's face was glum, but Salvatore's small eyes were sparkling.

"I have won it all—all!" he said. "Ecco!"

And he held out his hand with the notes.

"Salvatore is birbante!" said Gaspare, sullenly. "He did not win it fairly. I saw him—"

"Never mind, Gaspare!" said Maurice.

He put his hand on the boy's shoulder.

"To-morrow I'll give you the same," he whispered.

"And now," he added, aloud, "let's go to bed. I've been rowing Maddalena round the island and I'm tired. I shall sleep like a top."

As they went up the steep path he took Salvatore familiarly by the arm.

"You are too clever, Salvatore," he said. "You play too well for Gaspare."

Salvatore chuckled and handled the five-lire notes voluptuously.

"Cci basu li manu!" he said. "Cci basu li manu!"



XIII

Maurice lay on the big bed in the inner room of the siren's house, under the tiny light that burned before Maria Addolorata. The door of the house was shut, and he heard no more the murmur of the sea. Gaspare was curled up on the floor, on a bed made of some old sacking, with his head buried in his jacket, which he had taken off to use as a pillow. In the far room Maddalena and her father were asleep. Maurice could hear their breathing, Maddalena's light and faint, Salvatore's heavy and whistling, and degenerating now and then into a sort of stifled snore. But sleep did not come to Maurice. His eyes were open, and his clasped hands supported his head. He was thinking, thinking almost angrily.

He loved joy as few Englishmen love it, but as many southerners love it. His nature needed joy, was made to be joyous. And such natures resent the intrusion into their existence of any complications which make for tragedy as northern natures seldom resent anything. To-night Maurice had a grievance against fate, and he was considering it wrathfully and not without confusion.

Since he had kissed Maddalena in the night he was disturbed, almost unhappy. And yet he was surely face to face with something that was more than happiness. The dancing faun was dimly aware that in his nature there was not only the capacity for gayety, for the performance of the tarantella, but also a capacity for violence which he had never been conscious of when he was in England. It had surely been developed within him by the sun, by the coming of the heat in this delicious land. It was like an intoxication of the blood, something that went to head as well as heart. He wondered what it meant, what it might lead him to. Perhaps he had been faintly aware of its beginnings on that day when jealousy dawned within him as he thought of his wife, his woman, nursing her friend in Africa. Now it was gathering strength like a stream flooded by rains, but it was taking a different direction in its course.

He turned upon the pillow so that he could see the light burning before the Madonna. The face of the Madonna was faintly visible—a long, meek face with downcast eyes. Maddalena crossed herself often when she looked at that face. Maurice put up his hand to make the sign, then dropped it with a heavy sigh. He was not a Catholic. His religion—what was it? Sunworship perhaps, the worship of the body, the worship of whim. He did not know or care much. He felt so full of life and energy that the far, far future after death scarcely interested him. The present was his concern, the present after that kiss in the night. He had loved Hermione. Surely he loved her now. He did love her now. And yet when he had kissed her he had never been shaken by the headstrong sensation that had hold of him to-night, the desire to run wild in love. He looked up to Hermione. The feeling of reverence had been a governing factor in his love for her. Now it seemed to him that a feeling of reverence was a barrier in the path of love, something to create awe, admiration, respect, but scarcely the passion that irresistibly draws man to woman. And yet he did love Hermione. He was confused, horribly confused.

For he knew that his longing was towards Maddalena.

He would like to rise up in the dawn, to take her in his arms, to carry her off in a boat upon the sea, or to set her on a mule and lead her up far away into the recesses of the mountains. By rocky paths he would lead her, beyond the olives and the vines, beyond the last cottage of the contadini, up to some eyrie from which they could look down upon the sunlit world. He wanted to be in wildness with her, inexorably divided from all the trammels of civilization. A desire of savagery had hold upon him to-night. He did not go into detail. He did not think of how they would pass their days. Everything presented itself to him broadly, tumultuously, with a surging, onward movement of almost desperate advance.

He wanted to teach those dark, inquiring young eyes all that they asked to know, to set in them the light of knowledge, to make them a woman's eyes.

And that he could never do.

His whole body was throbbing with heat, and tingling with a desire of movement, of activity. The knowledge that all this beating energy was doomed to uselessness, was born to do nothing, tortured him.

He tried to think steadily of Hermione, but he found the effort a difficult one. She was remote from his body, and that physical remoteness seemed to set her far from his spirit, too. In him, though he did not know it, was awake to-night the fickleness of the south, of the southern spirit that forgets so quickly what is no longer near to the southern body. The sun makes bodily men, makes very strong the chariot of the flesh. Sight and touch are needful, the actions of the body, to keep the truly southern spirit true. Maurice could neither touch nor see Hermione. In her unselfishness she had committed the error of dividing herself from him. The natural consequences of that self-sacrifice were springing up now like the little yellow flowers in the grasses of the lemon groves. With all her keen intelligence she made the mistake of the enthusiast, that of reading into those whom she loved her own shining qualities, of seeing her own sincerities, her own faithfulness, her own strength, her own utter loyalty looking out on her from them. She would probably have denied that this was so, but so it was. At this very moment in Africa, while she watched at the bedside of Artois, she was thinking of her husband's love for her, loyalty to her, and silently blessing him for it; she was thanking God that she had drawn such a prize in the lottery of life. And had she been already separated from Maurice for six months she would never have dreamed of doubting his perfect loyalty now that he had once loved her and taken her to be his. The "all in all or not at all" nature had been given to Hermione. She must live, rejoice, suffer, die, according to that nature. She knew much, but she did not know how to hold herself back, how to be cautious where she loved, how to dissect the thing she delighted in. She would never know that, so she would never really know her husband, as Artois might learn to know him, even had already known him. She would never fully understand the tremendous barriers set up between people by the different strains of blood in them, the stern dividing lines that are drawn between the different races of the earth. Her nature told her that love can conquer all things. She was too enthusiastic to be always far-seeing.

So now, while Maurice lay beneath the tiny light in the house of the sirens and was shaken by the wildness of desire, and thought of a mountain pilgrimage far up towards the sun with Maddalena in his arms, she sat by Artois's bed and smiled to herself as she pictured the house of the priest, watched over by the stars of Sicily, and by her many prayers. Maurice was there, she knew, waiting for her return, longing for it as she longed for it. Artois turned on his pillow wearily, saw her, and smiled.

"You oughtn't to be here," he whispered. "But I am glad you are here."

"And I am glad, I am thankful I am here!" she said, truly.

"If there is a God," he said, "He will bless you for this!"

"Hush! You must try to sleep."

She laid her hand in his.

"God has blessed me," she thought, "for all my poor little attempts at goodness, how far, far more than I deserve!"

And the gratitude within her was almost like an ache, like a beautiful pain of the heart.

In the morning Maurice put to sea with Gaspare and Salvatore. He knew the silvery calm of dawn on a day of sirocco. Everything was very still, in a warm and heavy stillness of silver that made the sweat run down at the least movement or effort. Masses of white, feathery vapors floated low in the sky above the sea, concealing the flanks of the mountains, but leaving their summits clear. And these vapors, hanging like veils with tattered edges, created a strange privacy upon the sea, an atmosphere of eternal mysteries. As the boat went out from the shore, urged by the powerful arms of Salvatore, its occupants were silent. The merriment and the ardor of the night, the passion of cards and of desire, were gone, as if they had been sucked up into the smoky wonder of the clouds, or sucked down into the silver wonder of the sea.

Gaspare looked drowsy and less happy than usual. He had not yet recovered from his indignation at the success of Salvatore's cheating, and Maurice, who had not slept, felt the bounding life, the bounding fire of his youth held in check as by the action of a spell. The carelessness of excitement, of passion, was replaced by another carelessness—the carelessness of dream. It seemed to him now as if nothing mattered or ever could matter. On the calm silver of a hushed and breathless sea, beneath dense white vapors that hid the sky, he was going out slowly, almost noiselessly, to a fate of which he knew nothing, to a quiet emptiness, to a region which held no voices to call him this way or that, no hands to hold him, no eyes to regard him. His face was damp with sweat. He leaned over the gunwale and trailed his hand in the sea. It seemed to him unnaturally warm. He glanced up at the clouds. Heaven was blotted out. Was there a heaven? Last night he had thought there must be—but that was long ago. Was he sad? He scarcely knew. He was dull, as if the blood in him had run almost dry. He was like a sapless tree. Hermione and Maddalena—what were they? Shadows rather than women. He looked steadily at the sea. Was it the same element upon which he had been only a few hours ago under the stars with Maddalena? He could scarcely believe that it was the same. Sirocco had him fast, sirocco that leaves many Sicilians unchanged, unaffected, but that binds the stranger with cords of cotton wool which keep him like a net of steel.

Gaspare lay down in the bottom of the boat, buried his face in his arms, and gave himself again to sleep. Salvatore looked at him, and then at Maurice, and smiled with a fine irony.

"He thought he would win, signore."

"Cosa?" said Maurice, startled by the sound of a voice.

"He thought that he could play better than I, signore."

Salvatore closed one eye, and stuck his tongue a little out of the left side of his mouth, then drew it in with a clicking noise.

"No one gets the better of me," he said. "They may try. Many have tried, but in the end—"

He shook his head, took his right hand from the oar and flapped it up and down, then brought it downward with force, as if beating some one, or something, to his feet.

"I see," Maurice said, dully. "I see."

He thought to himself that he had been cleverer than Salvatore the preceding night, but he felt no sense of triumph. He had divined the fisherman's passion and turned it to his purpose. But what of that? Let the man rejoice, if he could, in this dream. Let all men do what they wished to do so long as he could be undisturbed. He looked again at the sea, dropped his hand into it once more.

"Shall I let down a line, signore?"

Salvatore's keen eyes were upon him. He shook his head.

"Not yet. I—" He hesitated.

The still silver of the sea drew him. He touched his forehead with his hand and felt the dampness on it.

"I'm going in," he said.

"Can you swim, signore?"

"Yes, like a fish. Don't follow me with the boat. Just let me swim out and come back. If I want you I'll call. But don't follow me."

Salvatore nodded appreciatively. He liked a good swimmer, a real man of the sea.

"And don't wake Gaspare, or he'll be after me."

"Va bene!"

Maurice stripped off his clothes, all the time looking at the sea. Then he sat down on the gunwale of the boat with his feet in the water. Salvatore had stopped rowing. Gaspare still slept.

It was curious to be going to give one's self to this silent silver thing that waited so calmly for the gift. He felt a sort of dull voluptuousness stealing over him as he stared at the water. He wanted to get away from his companions, from the boat, to be quite alone with sirocco.

"Addio Salvatore!" he said, in a low voice.

"A rivederci, signore."

He let himself down slowly into the water, feet foremost, and swam slowly away into the dream that lay before him.

Even now that he was in it the water felt strangely warm. He had not let his head go under, and the sweat was still on his face. The boat lay behind him. He did not think of it. He had forgotten it. He felt himself to be alone, utterly alone with the sea.

He had always loved the sea, but in a boyish, wholly natural way, as a delightful element, health-giving, pleasure-giving, associating it with holiday times, with bathing, fishing, boating, with sails on moonlight nights, with yacht-races about the Isle of Wight in the company of gay comrades. This sea of Sicily seemed different to him to-day from other seas, more mysterious and more fascinating, a sea of sirens about a Sirens' Isle. Mechanically he swam through it, scarcely moving his arms, with his chin low in the water—out towards the horizon-line.

He was swimming towards Africa.

Presently that thought came into his mind, that he was swimming towards Africa and Hermione, and away from Maddalena. It seemed to him, then, as if the two women on the opposite shores of this sea must know, Hermione that he was coming to her, Maddalena that he was abandoning her, and he began to think of them both as intent upon his journey, the one feeling him approach, the other feeling him recede. He swam more slowly. A curious melancholy had overtaken him, a deep depression of the spirit, such as often alternates in the Sicilian character with the lively gayety that is sent down upon its children by the sun. This lonely progress in the sea was prophetic. He must leave Maddalena. His friendship with her must come to an end, and soon. Hermione would return, and then, in no long time, they would leave the Casa del Prete and go back to England. They would settle down somewhere, probably in London, and he would take up his work with his father, and the Sicilian dream would be over.

The vapors that hid the sky seemed to drop a little lower down towards the sea, as if they were going to enclose him.

The Sicilian dream would be over. Was that possible? He felt as if the earth of Sicily would not let him go, as if, should the earth resign him, the sea of Sicily would keep him. He dwelt on this last fancy, this keeping of him by the sea. That would be strange, a quiet end to all things. Never before had he consciously contemplated his own death. The deep melancholy poured into him by sirocco caused him to do so now. Almost voluptuously he thought of death, a death in the sea of Sicily near the rocks of the isle of the sirens. The light would be kindled in the sirens' house and his eyes would not see it. They would be closed by the cold fingers of the sea. And Maddalena? The first time she had seen him she had seen him sinking in the sea. How strange if it should be so at the end, if the last time she saw him she saw him sinking in the sea. She had cried out. Would she cry out again or would she keep silence? He wondered. For a moment he felt as if it were ordained that thus he should die, and he let his body sink in the water, throwing up his hands. He went down, very far down, but he felt that Maddalena's eyes followed him and that in them he saw terrors enthroned.

Gaspare stirred in the boat, lifted his head from his arms and looked sleepily around him. He saw Salvatore lighting a pipe, bending forward over a spluttering match which he held in a cage made of his joined hands. He glanced away from him still sleepily, seeking the padrone, but he saw only the empty seats of the boat, the oars, the coiled-up nets, and lines for the fish.

"Dove—?" he began.

He sat up, stared wildly round.

"Dov'e il padrone?" he cried out, shrilly.

Salvatore started and dropped the match. Gaspare sprang at him.

"Dov'e il padrone? Dov'e il padrone?"

"Sangue di—" began Salvatore.

But the oath died upon his lips. His keen eyes had swept the sea and perceived that it was empty. From its silver the black dot which he had been admiringly watching had disappeared. Gaspare had waked, had asked his fierce question just as Maurice threw up his hands and sank down in his travesty of death.

"He was there! Madonna! He was there swimming a moment ago!" exclaimed Salvatore.

As he spoke he seized the oars, and with furious strokes propelled the boat in the direction Maurice had taken. But Gaspare would not wait. His instinct forbade him to remain inactive.

"May the Madonna turn her face from thee in the hour of thy death!" he yelled at Salvatore.

Then, with all his clothes on, he went over the side into the sea.

Maurice was an accomplished swimmer, and had ardently practised swimming under water when he was a boy. He could hold his breath for an exceptionally long time, and now he strove to beat all his previous records. With a few strokes he came up from the depths of the sea towards the surface, then began swimming under water, swimming vigorously, though in what direction he knew not. At last he felt the imperative need of air, and, coming up into the light again, he gasped, shook his head, lifted his eyelids that were heavy with the pressure of the water, heard a shrill cry, and felt a hand grasp him fiercely.

"Signorino! Signorino!"

"Gaspare!" he gulped.

He had not fully drawn breath yet.

"Madonna! Madonna!"

The hand still held him. The fingers were dug into his flesh. Then he heard a shout, and the boat came up with Salvatore leaning over its side, glaring down at him with fierce anxiety. He grasped the gunwale with both hands. Gaspare trod water, caught him by the legs, and violently assisted him upward. He tumbled over the side into the boat. Gaspare came after him, sank down in the bottom of the boat, caught him by the arms, stared into his face, saw him smiling.

"Sta bene Lei?" he cried. "Sta bene?"

"Benissimo."

The boy let go of him and, still staring at him, burst into a passion of tears that seemed almost angry.

"Gaspare! What is it? What's the matter?"

He put out his hand to touch the boy's dripping clothes.

"What has happened?"

"Niente! Niente!" said Gaspare, between violent sobs. "Mamma mia! Mamma mia!"

He threw himself down in the bottom of the boat and wept stormily, without shame, without any attempt to check or conceal his emotion. As in the tarantella he had given himself up utterly to joy, so now he gave himself up utterly to something that seemed like despair. He cried loudly. His whole body shook. The sea-water ran down from his matted hair and mingled with the tears that rushed over his brown cheeks.

"What is it?" Maurice asked of Salvatore.

"He thought the sea had taken you, signore."

"That was it? Gaspare—"

"Let him alone. Per Dio, signore, you gave me a fright, too."

"I was only swimming under water."

He looked at Gaspare. He longed to do something to comfort him, but he realized that such violence could not be checked by anything. It must wear itself out.

"And he thought I was dead!"

"Per Dio! And if you had been!"

He wrinkled up his face and spat.

"What do you mean?"

"Has he got a knife on him?"

He threw out his hand towards Gaspare.

"I don't know to-day. He generally has."

"I should have had it in me by now," said Salvatore.

And he smiled at the weeping boy almost sweetly, as if he could have found it in his heart to caress such a murderer.

"Row in to land," Maurice said.

He began to put on his clothes. Salvatore turned the boat round and they drew near to the rocks. The vapors were lifting now, gathering themselves up to reveal the blue of the sky, but the sea was still gray and mysterious, and the land looked like a land in a dream. Presently Gaspare put his fists to his eyes, lifted his head, and sat up. He looked at his master gloomily, as if in rebuke, and under this glance Maurice began to feel guilty, as if he had done something wrong in yielding to his strange impulses in the sea.

"I was only swimming under water, Gaspare," he said, apologetically.

The boy said nothing.

"I know now," continued Maurice, "that I shall never come to any harm with you to look after me."

Still Gaspare said nothing. He sat there on the floor of the boat with his dripping clothes clinging to his body, staring before him as if he were too deeply immersed in gloomy thoughts to hear what was being said to him.

"Gaspare!" Maurice exclaimed, moved by a sudden impulse. "Do you think you would be very unhappy away from your 'paese'?"

Gaspare shifted forward suddenly. A light gleamed in his eyes.

"D'you think you could be happy with me in England?"

He smiled.

"Si, signore!"

"When we have to go away from Sicily I shall ask the signora to let me take you with us."

Gaspare said nothing, but he looked at Salvatore, and his wet face was like a song of pride and triumph.



XIV

That day, ere he started with Gaspare for the house of the priest, Maurice made a promise to Maddalena. He pledged himself to go with her and her father to the great fair of San Felice, which takes place annually in the early days of June, when the throng of tourists has departed, and the long heats of the summer have not yet fully set in. He gave this promise in the presence of Salvatore and Gaspare, and while he did so he was making up his mind to something. That day at the fair should be the day of his farewell to Maddalena. Hermione must surely be coming back in June. It was impossible that she could remain in Kairouan later. The fury of the African summer would force her to leave the sacred city, her mission of salvation either accomplished or rendered forever futile by the death of her friend. And then, when Hermione came, within a short time no doubt they would start for England, taking Gaspare with them. For Maurice really meant to keep the boy in their service. After the strange scene of the morning he felt as if Gaspare were one of the family, a retainer with whose devoted protection he could never dispense. Hermione, he was sure, would not object.

Hermione would not object. As he thought that, Maurice was conscious of a feeling such as sometimes moves a child, upon whom a parent or guardian has laid a gently restraining hand, violently to shrug his shoulders and twist his body in the effort to get away and run wild in freedom. He knew how utterly unreasonable and contemptible his sensation was, yet he had it. The sun had bred in him not merely a passion for complete personal liberty, but for something more, for lawlessness. For a moment he envied Gaspare, the peasant boy, whose ardent youth was burdened with so few duties to society, with so few obligations.

What was expected of Gaspare? Only a willing service, well paid, which he could leave forever at any moment he pleased. To his family he must, no doubt, give some of his earnings, but in return he was looked up to by all, even by his father, as a little god. And in everything else was not he free, wonderfully free in this island of the south, able to be careless, unrestrained, wild as a young hawk, yet to remain uncondemned, unwondered at?

And he—Maurice?

He thought of Hermione's ardent and tenderly observant eyes with a sort of terror. If she could know or even suspect his feelings of the previous night, what a tragedy he would be at once involved in! The very splendor of Hermione's nature, the generous nobility of her character, would make that tragedy the more poignant. She felt with such intensity, she thought she had so much. Careless though his own nature was, doubly careless here in Sicily, Maurice almost sickened at the idea of her ever suspecting the truth, that he was capable of being strongly drawn towards a girl like Maddalena, that he could feel as if a peasant who could neither read nor write caught at something within him that was like the essence of his life, like the core of that by which he enjoyed, suffered, desired.

But, of course, she would never suspect. And he laughed at himself, and made the promise about the fair, and, having made it and his resolution in regard to it, almost violently resolved to take no thought for the morrow, but to live carelessly and with gayety the days that lay before him, the few more days of his utter freedom in Sicily.

After all, he was doing no wrong. He had lived and was going to live innocently. And now that he realized things, realized himself, he would be reasonable. He would be careless, gay—yes, but not reckless, not utterly reckless as he felt inclined to be.

"What day of June is the fair?" he asked, looking at Maddalena.

"The 11th of June, signore," said Salvatore. "There will be many donkeys there—good donkeys."

Gaspare began to look fierce.

"I think of buying a donkey," added Salvatore, carelessly, with his small, shrewd eyes fixed upon Maurice's face.

Gaspare muttered something unintelligible.

"How much do they cost?" said Maurice.

"For a hundred lire you can get a very good donkey. It would be useful to Maddalena. She could go to the village sometimes then—she could go to Marechiaro to gossip with the neighbors."

"Has Maddalena broken her legs—Madonna!" burst forth Gaspare.

"Come along, Gaspare!" said Maurice, hastily.

He bade good-bye to the fisherman and his daughter, and set off with Gaspare through the trees.

"Be nice to Salvatore," said Maurice, as they went down towards the rocky wall.

"But he wants to make you give him a donkey, signorino. You do not know him. When he is with you at the fair he will—"

"Never mind. I say, Gaspare, I want—I want that day at the fair to be a real festa. Don't let's have any row on that day."

Gaspare looked at him with surprised, inquiring eyes, as if struck by his serious voice, by the insisting pressure in it.

"Why that day specially, signorino?" he asked, after a pause.

"Oh, well—it will be my last day of—I mean that the signora will be coming back from Africa by then, and we shall—"

"Si, signore?"

"We sha'n't be able to run quite so wild as we do now, you see. And, besides, we shall be going to England very soon then."

Gaspare's face lighted up.

"Shall I see London, signorino?"

"Yes," said Maurice.

He felt a sickness at his heart.

"I should like to live in London always," said Gaspare, excitedly.

"In London! You don't know it. In London you will scarcely ever see the sun."

"Aren't there theatres in London, signorino?"

"Theatres? Yes, of course. But there is no sea, Gaspare, there are no mountains."

"Are there many soldiers? Are there beautiful women?"

"Oh, there are plenty of soldiers and women."

"I should like always to live in London," repeated Gaspare, firmly.

"Well—perhaps you will. But—remember—we are all to be happy at the fair of San Felice."

"Si, signore. But be careful, or Salvatore will make you buy him a donkey. He had a wine-shop once, long ago, in Marechiaro, and the wine—Per Dio, it was always vino battezzato!"

"What do you mean?"

"Salvatore always put water in it. He is cattivo—and when he is angry—"

"I know. You told me. But it doesn't matter. We shall soon be going away, and then we sha'n't see him any more."

"Signorino?"

"Well?"

"You—do you want to stay here always?"

"I like being here."

"Why do you want to stay?"

For once Maurice felt as if he could not meet the boy's great, steady eyes frankly. He looked away.

"I like the sun," he answered. "I love it! I should like to live in the sunshine forever."

"And I should like to live always in London," reiterated Gaspare. "You want to live here because you have always been in London, and I want to live in London because I have always been here. Ecco!"

Maurice tried to laugh.

"Perhaps that is it. We wish for what we can't have. Dio mio!"

He threw out his arms.

"But, anyhow, I've not done with Sicily yet! Come on, Gaspare! Now for the rocks! Ciao! Ciao! Ciao! Morettina bella ciao!"

He burst out into a song, but his voice hardly rang true, and Gaspare looked at him again with a keen inquiry.

* * * * *

Artois was not yet destined to die. He said that Hermione would not let him die, that with her by his side it was useless for Death to approach him, to desire him, to claim him. Perhaps her courage gave to him the will to struggle against his enemy. The French doctor, deeply, almost sentimentally interested in the ardent woman who spoke his language with perfection and carried out such instructions of his as she considered sensible, with delicate care and strong thoroughness, thought and said so.

"But for madame," he said to Artois, "you would have died, monsieur. And why? Because till she came you had not the will to live. And it is the will to live that assists the doctor."

"I cannot be so ungallant as to die now," Artois replied, with a feeble but not sad smile. "Were I to do so, madame would think me ungrateful. No, I shall live. I feel now that I am going to live."

And, in fact, from the night of Maurice's visit with Gaspare to the house of the sirens he began to get better. The inflammation abated, the temperature fell till it was normal, the agony died away gradually from the tormented body, and slowly, very slowly, the strength that had ebbed began to return. One day, when the doctor said that there was no more danger of any relapse, Artois called Hermione and told her that now she must think no more of him, but of herself; that she must pack up her trunk and go back to her husband.

"You have saved me, and I have killed your honeymoon," he said, rather sadly. "That will always be a regret in my life. But, now go, my dear friend, and try to assuage your husband's wrath against me. How he must hate me!"

"Why, Emile?"

"Are you really a woman? Yes, I know that. No man could have tended me as you have. Yet, being a woman, how can you ask that question?"

"Maurice understands. He is blessedly understanding."

"Don't try his blessed comprehension of you and of me too far. You must go, indeed."

"I will go."

A shadow that he tried to keep back flitted across Artois's pale face, over which the unkempt beard straggled in a way that would have appalled his Parisian barber. Hermione saw it.

"I will go," she repeated, quietly, "when I can take you with me."

"But—"

"Hush! You are not to argue. Haven't you an utter contempt for those who do things by halves? Well, I have. When you can travel we'll go together."

"Where?"

"To Sicily. It will be hot there, but after this it will seem cool as the Garden of Eden under those trees where—but you remember! And there is always the breeze from the sea. And then from there, very soon, you can get a ship from Messina and go back to France, to Marseilles. Don't talk, Emile. I am writing to-night to tell Maurice."

And she left the room with quick softness.

Artois did not protest. He told himself that he had not the strength to struggle against the tenderness that surrounded him, that made it sweet to return to life. But he wondered silently how Maurice would receive him, how the dancing faun was bearing, would bear, this interference with his new happiness.

"When I am in Sicily I shall see at once, I shall know," he thought. "But till then—"

And he gave up the faint attempt to analyze the possible feelings of another, and sank again into the curious peace of convalescence.

And Hermione wrote to her husband, telling him of her plan, calling upon him with the fearless enthusiasm that was characteristic of her to welcome it and to rejoice, with her, in Artois's returning health and speedy presence in Sicily.

Maurice read this letter on the terrace alone. Gaspare had gone down on the donkey to Marechiaro to buy a bottle of Marsala, which Lucrezia demanded for the making of a zampaglione, and Lucrezia was upon the mountain-side spreading linen to dry in the sun. It was nearly the end of May now, and the trees in the ravine were thick with all their leaves. The stream that ran down through the shadows towards the sea was a tiny trickle of water, and the long, black snakes were coming boldly forth from their winter hiding-places to sun themselves among the bowlders that skirted the mountain tracks.

"I can't tell for certain," Hermione wrote, "how soon we shall arrive, but Emile is picking up strength every day, and I think, I pray, it may not be long. I dare to hope that we shall be with you about the second week of June. Oh, Maurice, something in me is almost mad with joy, is like Gaspare dancing the tarantella, when I think of coming up the mountain-side again with you as I came that first day, that first day of my real life. Tell Sebastiano he must play the 'Pastorale' to welcome me. And you—but I seem to feel your dear welcome here, to feel your hands holding mine, to see your eyes looking at me like Sicily. Isn't it strange? I feel out here in Africa as if you were Sicily. But you are, indeed, for me. You are Sicily, you are the sun, you are everything that means joy to me, that means music, that means hope and peace. Buon riposo, my dearest one. Can you feel—can you—how happy I am to-night?"

The second week in June! Maurice stood holding the letter in his hand. The fair of San Felice would take place during the second week in June. That was what he was thinking, not of Artois's convalescence, not of his coming to Sicily. If Hermione arrived before June 11th, could he go to the fair with Maddalena? He might go, of course. He might tell Hermione. She would say "Go!" She believed in him and had never tried to curb his freedom. A less suspicious woman than she was had surely never lived. But if she were in Sicily, if he knew that she was there in the house of the priest, waiting to welcome him at night when he came back from the fair, it would—it would—He laid the letter down. There was a burning heat of impatience, of anxiety, within him. Now that he had received this letter he understood with what intensity he had been looking forward to this day at the fair, to this last festa of his Sicilian life.

"Perhaps they will not come so soon!" he said to him self. "Perhaps they will not be here."

And then he began to think of Artois, to realize the fact that he was coming with Hermione, that he would be part of the final remnant of these Sicilian days.

His feeling towards Artois in London had been sympathetic, even almost reverential. He had looked at him as if through Hermione's eyes, had regarded him with a sort of boyish reverence. Hermione had said that Artois was a great man, and Maurice had felt that he was a great man, had mentally sat at his feet. Perhaps in London he would be ready to sit at his feet again. But was he ready to sit at his feet here in Sicily? As he thought of Artois's penetrating eyes and cool, intellectual face, of his air of authority, of his close intimacy with Hermione, he felt almost afraid of him. He did not want Artois to come here to Sicily. He hated his coming. He almost dreaded it as the coming of a spy. The presence of Artois would surely take away all the savor of this wild, free life, would import into it an element of the library, of the shut room, of that intellectual existence which Maurice was learning to think of as almost hateful.

And Hermione called upon him to rejoice with her over the fact that Artois would be able to accompany her. How she misunderstood him! Good God! how she misunderstood him! It seemed really as if she believed that his mind was cast in precisely the same mould as her own, as if she thought that because she and he were married they must think and feel always alike. How absurd that was, and how impossible!

A sense of being near a prison door came upon him. He threw Hermione's letter onto the writing-table, and went out into the sun.

When Gaspare returned that evening Maurice told him the news from Africa. The boy's face lit up.

"Oh, then shall we go to London?" he said.

"Why not?" Maurice exclaimed, almost violently. "It will all be different! Yes, we had better go to London!"

"Signorino."

"Well, what is it, Gaspare?"

"You do not like that signore to come here."

"I—why not? Yes, I—"

"No, signorino. I can see in your face that you do not like it. Your face got quite black just now. But if you do not like it why do you let him come? You are the padrone here."

"You don't understand. The signore is a friend of mine."

"But you said he was the friend of the signora."

"So he is. He is the friend of both of us."

Gaspare said nothing for a moment. His mind was working busily. At last he said:

"Then Maddalena—when the signora comes will she be the friend of the signora, as well as your friend?"

"Maddalena—that has nothing to do with it."

"But Maddalena is your friend!"

"That's quite different."

"I do not understand how it is in England," Gaspare said, gravely. "But"—and he nodded his head wisely and spread out his hands—"I understand many things, signorino, perhaps more than you think. You do not want the signore to come. You are angry at his coming."

"He is a very kind signore," said Maurice, hastily. "And he can speak dialetto."

Gaspare smiled and shook his head again. But he did not say anything more. For a moment Maurice had an impulse to speak to him frankly, to admit him into the intimacy of a friend. He was a Sicilian, although he was only a boy. He was Sicilian and he would understand.

"Gaspare," he began.

"Si, signore."

"As you understand so much—"

"Si, signore?"

"Perhaps you—" He checked himself, realizing that he was on the edge of doing an outrageous thing. "You must know that the friends of the signora are my friends and that I am always glad to welcome them."

"Va bene, signorino! Va bene!"

The boy began to look glum, understanding at once that he was being played with.

"I must go to give Tito his food."

And he stuck his hands in his pockets and went away round the corner of the cottage, whistling the tune of the "Canzone di Marechiaro."

Maurice began to feel as if he were in the dark, but as if he were being watched there. He wondered how clearly Gaspare read him, how much he knew. And Artois? When he came, with his watchful eyes, there would be another observer of the Sicilian change. He did not much mind Gaspare, but he would hate Artois. He grew hot at the mere thought of Artois being there with him, observing, analyzing, playing the literary man's part in this out-door life of the mountains and of the sea.

"I'm not a specimen," he said to himself, "and I'm damned if I'll be treated as one!"

It did not occur to him that he was anticipating that which might never happen. He was as unreasonable as a boy who foresees possible interference with his pleasures.

This decision of Hermione to bring with her to Sicily Artois, and its communication to Maurice, pushed him on to the recklessness which he had previously resolved to hold in check. Had Hermione been returning to him alone he would have felt that a gay and thoughtless holiday time was coming to an end, but he must have felt, too, that only tenderness and strong affection were crossing the sea from Africa to bind him in chains that already he had worn with happiness and peace. But the knowledge that with Hermione was coming Artois gave to him a definite vision of something that was like a cage. Without consciously saying it to himself, he had in London been vaguely aware of Artois's coldness of feeling towards him. Had any one spoken of it to him he would probably have denied that this was so. There are hidden things in a man that he himself does not say to himself that he knows of. But Maurice's vision of a cage was conjured up by Artois's mental attitude towards him in London, the attitude of the observer who might, in certain circumstances, be cruel, who was secretly ready to be cruel. And, anticipating the unpleasant probable, he threw himself with the greater violence into the enjoyment of his few more days of complete liberty.

He wrote to Hermione, expressing as naturally as he could his ready acquiescence in her project, and then gave himself up to the light-heartedness that came with the flying moments of these last days of emancipation in the sun. His mood was akin to the mood of the rich man, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The music, he knew, must presently fail. The tarantella must come to an end. Well, then he would dance with his whole soul. He would not husband his breath nor save his strength. He would be thoughtless because for a moment he had thought too much, too much for his nature of the dancing faun who had been given for a brief space of time his rightful heritage.

Each day now he went down to the sea.

"How hot it is!" he would say to Gaspare. "If I don't have a bath I shall be suffocated."

"Si, signore. At what time shall we go?"

"After the siesta. It will be glorious in the sea to-day."

"Si, signore, it is good to be in the sea."

The boy smiled, at last would sometimes laugh. He loved his padrona, but he was a male and a Sicilian. And the signora had gone across the sea to her friend. These visits to the sea seemed to him very natural. He would have done the same as his padrone in similar circumstances with a light heart, with no sense of doing wrong. Only sometimes he raised a warning voice.

"Signorino," he would say, "do not forget what I have told you."

"What, Gaspare?"

"Salvatore is birbante. You think he likes you."

"Why shouldn't he like me?"

"You are a forestiere. To him you are as nothing. But he likes your money."

"Well, then? I don't care whether he likes me or not. What does it matter?"

"Be careful, signorino. The Sicilian has a long hand. Every one knows that. Even the Napoletano knows that. I have a friend who was a soldier at Naples, and—"

"Come, now, Gaspare! What reason will there ever be for Salvatore to turn against me?"

"Va bene, signorino, va bene! But Salvatore is a bad man when he thinks any one has tried to do him a wrong. He has blood in his eyes then, and when we Sicilians see through blood we do not care what we do—no, not if all the world is looking at us."

"I shall do no wrong to Salvatore. What do you mean?"

"Niente, signorino, niente!"

"Stick the cloth on Tito, and put something in the pannier. Al mare! Al mare!"

The boy's warning rang in deaf ears. For Maurice really meant what he said. He was reckless, perhaps, but he was going to wrong no one, neither Salvatore, nor Hermione, nor Maddalena. The coming of Artois drove him into the arms of pleasure, but it would never drive him into the arms of sin. For it was surely no sin to make a little love in this land of the sun, to touch a girl's hand, to snatch a kiss sometimes from the soft lips of a girl, from whom he would never ask anything more, whatever leaping desire might prompt him.

And Salvatore was always at hand. He seldom put to sea in these days unless Maurice went with him in the boat. His greedy eyes shone with a light of satisfaction when he saw Tito coming along the dusty white road from Isola Bella, and at night, when he crossed himself superstitiously before Maria Addolorata, he murmured a prayer that more strangers might be wafted to his "Paese," many strangers with money in their pockets and folly in their hearts. Then let the sea be empty of fish and the wind of the storm break up his boat—it would not matter. He would still live well. He might even at the last have money in the bank at Marechiaro, houses in the village, a larger wine-shop than Oreste in the Corso.

But he kept his small eyes wide open and seldom let Maddalena be long alone with the forestiere, and this supervision began to irritate Maurice, to make him at last feel hostile to Salvatore. He remembered Gaspare's words about the fisherman—"To him you are as nothing. But he likes your money"—and a longing to trick this fox of the sea, who wanted to take all and make no return, came to him.

"Why can one never be free in this world?" he thought, almost angrily. "Why must there always be some one on the watch to see what one is doing, to interfere with one's pleasure?"

He began presently almost to hate Salvatore, who evidently thought that Maurice was ready to wrong him, and who, nevertheless, grasped greedily at every soldo that came from the stranger's pocket, and touted perpetually for more.

His attitude was hideous. Maurice pretended not to notice it, and was careful to keep on the most friendly possible terms with him. But, while they acted their parts, the secret sense of enmity grew steadily in the two men, as things grow in the sun. When Maurice saw the fisherman, with a smiling, bird's face, coming to meet him as he climbed up through the trees to the sirens' house, he sometimes longed to strike him. And when Maurice went away with Gaspare in the night towards the white road where Tito, tied to a stake, was waiting to carry the empty pannier that had contained a supper up the mountain to the house of the priest, Salvatore stood handling his money, and murmuring:

"Maledetto straniero! Madonna! Ma io sono piu birbante di Lei, mille volte piu birbante, Dio mio!"

And he laughed as he went towards the sirens' house. It amused him to think that a stranger, an "Inglese," fancied that he could play with a Sicilian, who had never been "worsted," even by one of his own countrymen.



XV

Maurice had begun to dread the arrival of the post. Artois was rapidly recovering his strength, and in each of her letters Hermione wrote with a more glowing certainty of her speedy return to Sicily, bringing the invalid with her. Would they come before June 11th, the day of the fair? That was the question which preoccupied Maurice, which began to haunt him, and set a light of anxiety in his eyes when he saw Antonino climbing up the mountain-side with the letter-bag slung over his shoulder. He felt as if he could not forego this last festa. When it was over, when the lights had gone out in the houses of San Felice, and the music was silent, and the last rocket had burst in the sky, showering down its sparks towards the gaping faces of the peasants, he would be ready to give up this free, unintellectual life, this life in which his youth ran wild. He would resign himself to the inevitable, return to the existence in which, till now, he had found happiness, and try to find it there once more, try to forget the strange voices that had called him, the strange impulses that had prompted him. He would go back to his old self, and seek pleasure in the old paths, where he walked with those whom society would call his "equals," and did not spend his days with men who wrung their scant livelihood from the breast of the earth and from the breast of the sea, with women whose eyes, perhaps, were full of flickering fires, but who had never turned the leaves of a printed book, or traced a word upon paper. He would sit again at the feet of people who were cleverer and more full of knowledge than himself, and look up to them with reverence.

But he must have his festa first. He counted upon that. He desired that so strongly, almost so fiercely, that he felt as if he could not bear to be thwarted, as if, should fate interfere between him and the fulfilment of this longing, he might do something almost desperate. He looked forward to the fair with something of the eagerness and the anticipation of a child expectant of strange marvels, of wonderful and mysterious happenings, and the name San Felice rang in his ears with a music that was magical, suggesting curious joys.

He often talked about the fair to Gaspare, asking him many questions which the boy was nothing loath to answer.

To Gaspare the fair of San Felice was the great event of the Sicilian year. He had only been to it twice; the first time when he was but ten years old, and was taken by an uncle who had gone to seek his fortune in South America, and had come back for a year to his native land to spend some of the money he had earned as a cook, and afterwards as a restaurant proprietor, in Buenos Ayres; the second time when he was sixteen, and had succeeded in saving up a little of the money given to him by travellers whom he had accompanied as a guide on their excursions. And these two days had been red-letter days in his life. His eyes shone with excitement when he spoke of the festivities at San Felice, of the bands of music—there were three "musics" in the village; of the village beauties who sauntered slowly up and down, dressed in brocades and adorned with jewels which had been hoarded in the family chests for generations, and were only taken out to be worn at the fair and at wedding-feasts; of the booths where all the desirable things of the world were exposed for sale—rings, watches, chains, looking-glasses, clocks that sang and chimed with bells like church towers, yellow shoes, and caps of all colors, handkerchiefs, and shawls with fringes that, when worn, drooped almost to the ground; ballads written by native poets, relating the life and the trial of Musolino, the famous brigand, his noble address to his captors, and his despair when he was condemned to eternal confinement; and the adventures of Giuseppe Moroni, called "Il Niccheri" (illetterato), composed in eight-lined verses, and full of the most startling and passionate occurrences. There were donkeys, too—donkeys from all parts of Sicily, mules from Girgenti, decorated with red-and-yellow harness, with pyramids of plumes and bells upon their heads, painted carts with pictures of the miracles of the saints and the conquests of the Saracens, turkeys and hens, and even cages containing yellow birds that came from islands far away and that sang with the sweetness of the angels. The ristoranti were crowded with people, playing cards and eating delicious food, and outside upon the pavements were dozens of little tables at which you could sit, drinking syrups of beautiful hues and watching at your ease the marvels of the show. Here came boys from Naples to sing and dance, peddlers with shining knives and elegant walking-sticks for sale, fortune-tellers with your fate already printed and neatly folded in an envelope, sometimes a pigeon-man with a high black hat, who made his doves hop from shoulder to shoulder along a row of school-children, or a man with a monkey that played antics to the sound of a grinding organ, and that was dressed up in a red worsted jacket and a pair of cloth trousers. And there were shooting-galleries and puppet-shows and dancing-rooms, and at night, when the darkness came, there were giuochi di fuoco which lit up the whole sky, till you could see Etna quite plainly.

"E' veramente un paradiso!" concluded Gaspare.

"A paradise!" echoed Maurice. "A paradise! I say, Gaspare, why can't we always live in paradise? Why can't life be one long festa?"

"Non lo so, signore. And the signora? Do you think she will be here for the fair?"

"I don't know. But if she is here, I am not sure that she will come to see it."

"Why not, signorino? Will she stay with the sick signore?"

"Perhaps. But I don't think she will be here. She does not say she will be here."

"Do you want her to be here, signorino?" Gaspare asked, abruptly.

"Why do you ask such a question? Of course I am happy, very happy, when the signora is here."

As he said the words Maurice remembered how happy he had been in the house of the priest alone with Hermione. Indeed, he had thought that he was perfectly happy, that he had nothing left to wish for. But that seemed long ago. He wondered if he could ever again feel that sense of perfect contentment. He could scarcely believe so. A certain feverishness had stolen into his Sicilian life. He felt often like a man in suspense, uncertain of the future, almost apprehensive. He no longer danced the tarantella with the careless abandon of a boy. And yet he sometimes had a strange consciousness that he was near to something that might bring to him a joy such as he had never yet experienced.

"I wish I knew what day Hermione is arriving," he thought, almost fretfully. "I wish she wouldn't keep me hung up in this condition of uncertainty. She seems to think that I have nothing to do but just wait here upon the pleasure of Artois."

With that last thought the old sense of injury rose in him again. This friend of Hermione's was spoiling everything, was being put before every one. It was really monstrous that even during their honeymoon this old friendship should intrude, should be allowed to govern their actions and disturb their serenity. Now that Artois was out of danger Maurice began to forget how ill he had been, began sometimes to doubt whether he had ever been so ill as Hermione supposed. Perhaps Artois was one of those men who liked to have a clever woman at his beck and call. These literary fellows were often terribly exigent, eaten up with the sense of their own importance. But he, Maurice, was not going to allow himself to be made a cat's-paw of. He would make Artois understand that he was not going to permit his life to be interfered with by any one.

"I'll let him see that when he comes," he said to himself. "I'll take a strong line. A man must be the master of his own life if he's worth anything. These Sicilians understand that."

He began secretly to admire what before he had thought almost hateful, the strong Arab characteristics that linger on in many Sicilians, to think almost weak and unmanly the Western attitude to woman.

"I will be master," he said to himself again. "All these Sicilians are wondering that I ever let Hermione go to Africa. Perhaps they think I'm a muff to have given in about it. And now, when Hermione comes back with a man, they'll suppose—God knows what they won't imagine!"

He had begun so to identify himself with the Sicilians about Marechiaro that he cared what they thought, was becoming sensitive to their opinion of him as if he had been one of themselves. One day Gaspare told him a story of a contadino who had bought a house in the village, but who, being unable to complete the payment, had been turned out into the street.

"And now, signorino," Gaspare concluded, "they are all laughing at him in Marechiaro. He dare not show himself any more in the Piazza. When a man cannot go any more into the Piazza—Madonna!"

He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands in a gesture of contemptuous pity.

"E' finito!" he exclaimed.

"Certo!" said Maurice.

He was resolved that he would never be in such a case. Hermione, he felt now, did not understand the Sicilians as he understood them. If she did she would not bring back Artois from Africa, she would not arrive openly with him. But surely she ought to understand that such an action would make people wonder, would be likely to make them think that Artois was something more than her friend. And then Maurice thought of the day of their arrival, of his own descent to the station, to wait upon the platform for the train. Artois was not going to stay in the house of the priest. That was impossible, as there was no guest-room. He would put up at the hotel in Marechiaro. But that would make little difference. He was to arrive with Hermione. Every one would know that she had spent all this time with him in Africa. Maurice grew hot as he thought of the smiles on the Sicilian faces, of the looks of astonishment at the strange doings of the forestieri. Hermione's enthusiastic kindness was bringing her husband almost to shame. It was a pity that people were sometimes thoughtless in their eager desire to be generous and sympathetic.

One day, when Maurice had been brooding over this matter of the Sicilian's view of Hermione's proceedings, the spirit moved him to go down on foot to Marechiaro to see if there were any letters for him at the post. It was now June 7th. In four days would come the fair. As the time for it drew near, his anxiety lest anything should interfere to prevent his going to it with Maddalena increased, and each day at post time he was filled with a fever of impatience to know whether there would be a letter from Africa or not. Antonino generally appeared about four o'clock, but the letters were in the village long before then, and this afternoon Maurice felt that he could not wait for the boy's coming. He had a conviction that there was a letter, a decisive letter from Hermione, fixing at last the date of her arrival with Artois. He must have it in his hands at the first possible moment. If he went himself to the post he would know the truth at least an hour and a half sooner than if he waited in the house of the priest. He resolved, therefore, to go, got his hat and stick, and set out, after telling Gaspare, who was watching for birds with his gun, that he was going for a stroll on the mountain-side and might be away for a couple of hours.

It was a brilliant afternoon. The landscape looked hard in the fiery sunshine, the shapes of the mountains fierce and relentless, the dry watercourses almost bitter in their barrenness. Already the devastation of the summer was beginning to be apparent. All tenderness had gone from the higher slopes of the mountains which, jocund in spring and in autumn with growing crops, were now bare and brown, and seamed like the hide of a tropical reptile gleaming with metallic hues. The lower slopes were still panoplied with the green of vines and of trees, but the ground beneath the trees was arid. The sun was coming into his dominion with pride and cruelty, like a conqueror who loots the land he takes to be his own.

But Maurice did not mind the change, which drove the tourists northward, and left Sicily to its own people. He even rejoiced in it. As each day the heat increased he was conscious of an increasing exultation, such as surely the snakes and the lizards feel as they come out of their hiding-places into the golden light. He was filled with a glorious sense of expansion, as if his capabilities grew larger, as if they were developed by heat like certain plants. None of the miseries that afflict many people in the violent summers which govern southern lands were his. His skin did not peel, his eyes did not become inflamed, nor did his head ache under the action of the burning rays. They came to him like brothers and he rejoiced in their company. To-day, as he descended to Marechiaro, he revelled in the sun. Its ruthlessness made him feel ruthless. He was conscious of that. At this moment he was in absolutely perfect physical health. His body was lithe and supple, yet his legs and arms were hard with springing muscle. His warm blood sang through his veins like music through the pipes of an organ. His eyes shone with the superb animation of youth that is radiantly sound. For, despite his anxiety, his sometimes almost fretful irritation when he thought about the coming of Artois and the passing of his own freedom, there were moments when he felt as if he could leap with the sheer joy of life, as if he could lift up his arms and burst forth into a wild song of praise to his divinity, the sun. And this grand condition of health made him feel ruthless, as the man who conquers and enters a city in triumph feels ruthless. As he trod down towards Marechiaro to-day, thinking of the letter that perhaps awaited him, it seemed to him that it would be monstrous if anything, if any one, were to interfere with his day of joy, the day he was looking forward to with such eager anticipation. He felt inclined to trample over opposition. Yet what could he do if, by some evil chance, Hermione and Artois arrived the day before the fair, or on the very day of the fair? He hurried his steps. He wanted to be in the village, to know whether there was a letter for him from Africa.

When he came into the village it was about half-past two o'clock, and the long, narrow main street was deserted. The owners of some of the antiquity shops had already put up their shutters for the summer. Other shops, still open, showed gaping doorways, through which no travellers passed. Inside, the proprietors were dozing among their red brocades, their pottery, their Sicilian jewelry and obscure pictures thick with dust, guarded by squadrons of large, black flies, which droned on walls and ceilings, crept over the tiled floors, and clung to the draperies and laces which lay upon the cabinets. In the shady little rooms of the barbers small boys in linen jackets kept a drowsy vigil for the proprietors, who were sleeping in some dark corner of bedchamber or wine-shop. But no customer came to send them flying. The sun made the beards push on the brown Sicilian faces, but no one wanted to be shaved before the evening fell. Two or three lads lounged by on their way to the sea with towels and bathing-drawers over their arms. A few women were spinning flax on the door-lintels, or filling buckets of water from the fountain. A few children were trying to play mysterious games in the narrow alleys that led downward to the sea and upward to the mountains on the left and right of the street. A donkey brayed under an archway as if to summon its master from his siesta. A cat stole along the gutter, and vanished into a hole beneath a shut door. But the village was almost like a dead village, slain by the sun in his carelessness of pride.

On his way to the post Maurice passed through the Piazza that was the glory of Marechiaro and the place of assemblage for its people. Here the music sounded on festa days before the stone steps that led up to the church of San Giuseppe. Here was the principal caffe, the Caffe Nuovo, where granite and ices were to be had, delicious yellow cakes, and chocolate made up into shapes of crowing cocks, of pigs, of little men with hats, and of saints with flowing robes. Here, too, was the club, with chairs and sofas now covered with white, and long tables adorned with illustrated journals and the papers of Catania, of Messina, and Palermo. But at this hour the caffe was closed and the club was empty. For the sun beat down with fury upon the open space with its tiled pavement, and the seats let into the wall that sheltered the Piazza from the precipice that frowned above the sea were untenanted by loungers. As Maurice went by he thought of Gaspare's words, "When a man cannot go any more into the Piazza—Madonna, it is finished!" This was the place where the public opinion of Marechiaro was formed, where fame was made and characters were taken away. He paused for an instant by the church, then went on under the clock tower and came to the post.

"Any letters for me, Don Paolo?" he asked of the postmaster.

The old man saluted him languidly through the peep-hole.

"Si, signore, ce ne sono."

He turned to seek for them while Maurice waited. He heard the flies buzzing. Their noise was loud in his ears. His heart beat strongly and he was gnawed by suspense. Never before had he felt so anxious, so impatient to know anything as he was now to know if among the letters there was one from Hermione.

"Ecco, signore!"

"Grazie!"

Maurice took the packet.

"A rivederci!"

"A rivederlo, signore."

He went away down the street. But now he had his letters he did not look at them immediately. Something held him back from looking at them until he had come again into the Piazza. It was still deserted. He went over to the seat by the wall, and sat down sideways, so that he could look over the wall to the sea immediately below him. Then, very slowly, he drew out his cigarette-case, selected a cigarette, lit it, and began to smoke like a man who was at ease and idle. He glanced over the wall. At the foot of the precipice by the sea was the station of Cattaro, at which Hermione and Artois would arrive when they came. He could see the platform, some trucks of merchandise standing on the rails, the white road winding by towards San Felice and Etna. After a long look down he turned at last to the packet from the post which he had laid upon the hot stone at his side. The Times, the "Pink 'un," the Illustrated London News, and three letters. The first was obviously a bill forwarded from London. The second was also from England. He recognized the handwriting of his mother. The third? He turned it over. Yes, it was from Hermione. His instinct had not deceived him. He was certain, too, that it did not deceive him now. He was certain that this was the letter that fixed the date of her coming with Artois. He opened the two other letters and glanced over them, and then at last he tore the covering from Hermione's. A swift, searching look was enough. The letter dropped from his hand to the seat. He had seen these words:

"Isn't it splendid? Emile may leave at once. But there is no good boat till the tenth. We shall take that, and be at Cattaro on the eleventh at five o'clock in the afternoon...."

"Isn't it splendid?"

For a moment he sat quite still in the glare of the sun, mentally repeating to himself these words of his wife. So the inevitable had happened. For he felt it was inevitable. Fate was against him. He was not to have his pleasure.

"Signorino! Come sta lei? Lei sta bene?"

He started and looked up. He had heard no footstep. Salvatore stood by him, smiling at him, Salvatore with bare feet, and a fish-basket slung over his arm.

"Buon giorno, Salvatore!" he answered, with an effort.

Salvatore looked at Maurice's cigarette, put down the basket, and sat down on the seat by Maurice's side.

"I haven't smoked to-day, signore," he began. "Dio mio! But it must be good to have plenty of soldi!"

"Ecco!"

Maurice held out his cigarette-case.

"Take two—three!"

"Grazie, signore, mille grazie!"

He took them greedily.

"And the fair, signorino—only four days now to the fair! I have been to order the donkeys for me and Maddalena."

"Davvero?" Maurice said, mechanically.

"Si, signore. From Angelo of the mill. He wanted fifteen lire, but I laughed at him. I was with him a good hour and I got them for nine. Per Dio! Fifteen lire and to a Siciliano! For he didn't know you were coming. I took care not to tell him that."

"Oh, you took care not to tell him that I was coming!"

Maurice was looking over the wall at the platform of the station far down below. He seemed to see himself upon it, waiting for the train to glide in on the day of the fair, waiting among the smiling Sicilian facchini.

"Si, signore. Was not I right?"

"Quite right."

"Per Dio, signore, these are good cigarettes. Where do they come from?"

"From Cairo, in Egypt."

"Egitto! They must cost a lot."

He edged nearer to Maurice.

"You must be very happy, signorino."

"I!" Maurice laughed. "Madonna! Why?"

"Because you are so rich!"

There was a fawning sound in the fisherman's voice, a fawning look in his small, screwed-up eyes.

"To you it would be nothing to buy all the donkeys at the fair of San Felice."

Maurice moved ever so little away from him.

"Ah, signorino, if I had been born you how happy I should be!"

And he heaved a great sigh and puffed at the cigarette voluptuously.

Maurice said nothing. He was still looking at the railway platform. And now he seemed to see the train gliding in on the day of the fair of San Felice.

"Signorino! Signorino!"

"Well, what is it, Salvatore?"

"I have ordered the donkeys for ten o'clock. Then we can go quietly. They will be at Isola Bella at ten o'clock. I shall bring Maddalena round in the boat."

"Oh!"

Salvatore chuckled.

"She has got a surprise for you, signore."

"A surprise?"

"Per Dio!"

"What is it?"

His voice was listless, but now he looked at Salvatore.

"I ought not to tell you, signore. But—if I do—you won't ever tell her?"

"No."

"A new gown, signorino, a beautiful new gown, made by Maria Compagni here in the Corso. Will you be at Isola Bella with Gaspare by ten o'clock on the day, signorino?"

"Yes, Salvatore!" Maurice said, in a loud, firm, almost angry voice. "I will be there. Don't doubt it. Addio Salvatore!"

He got up.

"A rivederci, signore. Ma—"

He got up, too, and bent to pick up his fish-basket.

"No, don't come with me. I'm going up now, straight up by the Castello."

"In all this heat? But it's steep there, signore, and the path is all covered with stones. You'll never—"

"That doesn't matter. I like the sun. Addio!"

"And this evening, signorino? You are coming to bathe this evening?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. Don't wait for me. Go to sea if you want to!"

"Birbanti!" muttered the fisherman, as he watched Maurice stride away across the Piazza, and strike up the mountain-side by the tiny path that led to the Castello. "You want to get me out of the way, do you? Birbanti! Ah, you fine strangers from England! You think to come here and find men that are babies, do you? men that—"

He went off noiselessly on his bare feet, muttering to himself with the half-smoked cigarette in his lean, brown hand.

Meanwhile, Maurice climbed rapidly up the steep track over the stones in the eye of the sun. He had not lied to Salvatore. While the fisherman had been speaking to him he had come to a decision. A disgraceful decision he knew it to be, but he would keep to it. Nothing should prevent him from keeping to it. He would be at Isola Bella on the day of the fair. He would go to San Felice. He would stay there till the last rocket burst in the sky over Etna, till the last song had been sung, the last toast shouted, the last tarantella danced, the last—kiss given—the last, the very last. He would ignore this message from Africa. He would pretend he had never received it. He would lie about it. Yes, he would lie—but he would have his pleasure. He was determined upon that, and nothing should shake him, no qualms of conscience, no voices within him, no memories of past days, no promptings of duty.

He hurried up the stony path. He did not feel the sun upon him. The sweat poured down over his face, his body. He did not know it. His heart was set hard, and he felt villanous, but he felt quite sure what he was going to do, quite sure that he was going to the fair despite that letter.

When he reached the priest's house he felt exhausted. Without knowing it he had come up the mountain at a racing pace. But he was not tired merely because of that. He sank down in a chair in the sitting-room. Lucrezia came and peeped at him.

"Where is Gaspare?" he asked, putting his hand instinctively over the pocket in which were the letters.

"He is still out after the birds, signore. He has shot five already."

"Poor little wretches! And he's still out?"

"Si, signore. He has gone on to Don Peppino's terreno now. There are many birds there. How hot you are, signorino! Shall I—"

"No, no. Nothing, Lucrezia! Leave me alone!"

She disappeared.

Then Maurice drew the letters from his pocket and slowly spread out Hermione's in his lap. He had not read it through yet. He had only glanced at it and seen what he had feared to see. Now he read it word by word, very slowly and carefully. When he had come to the end he kept it on his knee and sat for some time quite still.

In the letter Hermione asked him to go to the Hotel Regina Margherita at Marechiaro, and engage two good rooms facing the sea for Artois, a bedroom and a sitting-room. They were to be ready for the eleventh. She wrote with her usual splendid frankness. Her soul was made of sincerity as a sovereign is made of gold.

"I know"—these were her words—"I know you will try and make Emile's coming to Sicily a little festa. Don't think I imagine you are personally delighted at his coming, though I am sure you are delighted at his recovery. He is my old friend, not yours, and I am not such a fool as to suppose that you can care for him at all as I do, who have known him intimately and proved his loyalty and his nobility of nature. But I think, I am certain, Maurice, that you will make his coming a festa for my sake. He has suffered very much. He is as weak almost as a child still. There's something tremendously pathetic in the weakness of body of a man so brilliant in mind, so powerful of soul. It goes right to my heart as I think it would go to yours. Let us make his return to life beautiful and blessed. Sha'n't we? Put flowers in the rooms for me, won't you? Make them look homey. Put some books about. But I needn't tell you. We are one, you and I, and I needn't tell you any more. It would be like telling things to myself—as unnecessary as teaching an organ-grinder how to turn the handle of his organ! Oh, Maurice, I can laugh to-day! I could almost—I—get up and dance the tarantella all alone here in my little, bare room with no books and scarcely any flowers. And at the station show Emile he is welcome. He is a little diffident at coming. He fancies perhaps he will be in the way. But one look of yours, one grasp of your hand will drive it all out of him! God bless you, my dearest. How he has blessed me in giving you to me!"

As Maurice sat there, under his skin, burned deep brown by the sun, there rose a hot flush of red! Yes, he reddened at the thought of what he was going to do, but still he meant to do it. He could not forego his pleasure. He could not. There was something wild and imperious within him that defied his better self at this moment. But the better self was not dead. It was even startlingly alive, enough alive to stand almost aghast at that which was going, it knew, to dominate it—to dominate it for a time, but only for a time. On that he was resolved, as he was resolved to have this one pleasure to which he had looked forward, to which he was looking forward now. Men often mentally put a period to their sinning. Maurice put a period to his sinning as he sat staring at the letter on his knees. And the period which he put was the day of the fair at San Felice. After that day this book of his wild youth was to be closed forever.

After the day of the fair he would live rightly, sincerely, meeting as it deserved to be met the utter sincerity of his wife. He would be, after that date, entirely straight with her. He loved her. As he looked at her letter he felt that he did love, must love, such love as hers. He was not a bad man, but he was a wilful man. The wild heart of youth in him was wilful. Well, after San Felice, he would control that wilfulness of his heart, he would discipline it. He would do more, he would forget that it existed. After San Felice!

With a sigh, like that of a burdened man, he got up, took the letter in his hand, and went out up the mountain-side. There he tore the letter and its envelope into fragments, and hid the fragments in a heap of stones hot with the sun.

When Gaspare came in that evening with a string of little birds in his hand and asked Maurice if there were any letter from Africa to say when the signora would arrive, Maurice answered "No."

"Then the signora will not be here for the fair, signorino?" said the boy.

"I don't suppose—no, Gaspare, she will not be here for the fair."

"She would have written by now if she were coming.

"Yes, if she were coming she would certainly have written by now."



XVI

"Signorino! Signorino! Are you ready?"

It was Gaspare's voice shouting vivaciously from the sunny terrace, where Tito and another donkey, gayly caparisoned and decorated with flowers and little streamers of colored ribbon, were waiting before the steps.

"Si, si! I'm coming in a moment!" replied Maurice's voice from the bedroom.

Lucrezia stood by the wall looking very dismal. She longed to go to the fair, and that made her sad. But there was also another reason for her depression. Sebastiano was still away, and for many days he had not written to her. This was bad enough. But there was something worse. News had come to Marechiaro from a sailor of Messina, a friend of Sebastiano's, that Sebastiano was lingering in the Lipari Isles because he had found a girl there, a pretty girl called Teodora Amalfi, to whom he was paying attentions. And although Lucrezia laughed at the story, and pretended to disbelieve it, her heart was rent by jealousy and despair, and a longing to travel away, to cross the sea, to tear her lover from temptation, to—to speak for a few moments quietly—oh, very quietly—with this Teodora. Even now, while she stared at the donkeys, and at Gaspare in his festa suit, with two large, pink roses above his ears, she put up her hands instinctively to her own ears, as if to pluck the ear-rings out of them, as the Sicilian women of the lower classes do, deliberately, sternly, before they begin to fight their rivals, women who have taken their lovers or their husbands from them.

Ah, if she were only in the Lipari Isles she would speak with Teodora Amalfi, speak with her till the blood flowed! She set her teeth, and her face looked almost old in the sunshine.

"Coraggio, Lucrezia!" laughed Gaspare. "He will come back some day when—when he has sold enough to the people of the isles! But where is the padrone, Dio mio? Signorino! Signorino!"

Maurice appeared at the sitting-room door and came slowly down the steps.

Gaspare stared. "Eccomi!"

"Why, signorino, what is the matter? What has happened?"

"Happened? Nothing!"

"Then why do you look so black?"

"I! It's the shadow of the awning on my face."

He smiled. He kept on smiling.

"I say, Gasparino, how splendid the donkeys are! And you, too!"

He took hold of the boy by the shoulders and turned him round.

"Per Bacco! We shall make a fine show at the fair! I've got money, lot's of money, to spend!"

He showed his portfolio, full of dirty notes. Gaspare's eyes began to sparkle.

"Wait, signorino!"

He lifted his hands to Maurice's striped flannel jacket and thrust two large bunches of flowers and ferns into the two button-holes, to right and left.

"Bravo! Now, then."

"No, no, signorino! Wait!"

"More flowers! But where—what, over my ears, too!"

He began to laugh.

"But—"

"Si, signore, si! To-day you must be a real Siciliano!"

"Va bene!"

He bent down his head to be decorated.

"Pouf! They tickle! There, then! Now let's be off!"

He leaped onto Tito's back. Gaspare sprang up on the other donkey.

"Addio, Lucrezia!"

Maurice turned to her.

"Don't leave the house to-day."

"No, signore," said poor Lucrezia, in a deplorable voice.

"Mind, now! Don't go down to Marechiaro this afternoon."

There was an odd sound, almost of pleading, in his voice.

"No, signore."

"I trust you to be here—remember."

"Va bene, signorino!"

"Ah—a—a—ah!" shouted Gaspare.

They were off.

"Signorino," said Gaspare, presently, when they were in the shadow of the ravine, "why did you say all that to Lucrezia?"

"All what?"

"All that about not leaving the house to-day?"

"Oh—why—it's better to have some one there."

"Si, signore. But why to-day specially?"

"I don't know. There's no particular reason."

"I thought there was."

"No, of course not. How could there be?"

"Non lo so."

"If Lucrezia goes down to the village they'll be filling her ears with that stupid gossip about Sebastiano and that girl—Teodora."

"It was for Lucrezia then, signorino?"

"Yes, for Lucrezia. She's miserable enough already. I don't want her to be a spectacle when—when the signora returns."

"I wonder when she is coming? I wonder why she has not written all these days?"

"Oh, she'll soon come. We shall—we shall very soon have her here with us."

He tried to speak naturally, but found the effort difficult, knowing what he knew, that in the evening of that day Hermione would arrive at the house of the priest and find no preparations made for her return, no one to welcome her but Lucrezia—if, indeed, Lucrezia obeyed his orders and refrained from descending to the village on the chance of hearing some fresh news of her fickle lover. And Artois! There were no rooms engaged for him at the Hotel Regina Margherita. There were no flowers, no books. Maurice tingled—his whole body tingled for a moment—and he felt like a man guilty of some mean crime and arraigned before all the world. Then he struck Tito with his switch, and began to gallop down the steep path at a breakneck pace, sticking his feet far out upon either side. He would forget. He would put away these thoughts that were tormenting him. He would enjoy this day of pleasure for which he had sacrificed so much, for which he had trampled down his self-respect in the dust.

When they reached the road by Isola Bella, Salvatore's boat was just coming round the point, vigorously propelled by the fisherman's strong arms over the radiant sea. It was a magnificent day, very hot but not sultry, free from sirocco. The sky was deep blue, a passionate, exciting blue that seemed vocal, as if it were saying thrilling things to the world that lay beneath it. The waveless sea was purple, a sea, indeed, of legend, a wine-dark, lustrous, silken sea. Into it, just here along this magic coast, was surely gathered all the wonder of color of all the southern seas. They must be blanched to make this marvel of glory, this immense jewel of God. And the lemon groves were thick along the sea. And the orange-trees stood in their decorative squadrons drinking in the rays of the sun with an ecstatic submission. And Etna, snowless Etna, rose to heaven out of this morning world, with its base in the purple glory and its feather of smoke in the calling blue, child of the sea-god and of the god that looks down from the height, majestically calm in the riot of splendor that set the feet of June dancing in a great tarantella.

As Maurice saw the wonder of sea and sky, the boat coming in over the sea, with Maddalena in the stern holding a bouquet of flowers, his heart leaped up and he forgot for a moment the shadow in himself, the shadow of his own unworthiness. He sprang off the donkey.

"I'll go down to meet them!" he cried. "Catch hold of Tito, Gaspare!"

The railway line ran along the sea, between road and beach. He had to cross it. In doing so one of his feet struck the metal rail, which gave out a dry sound. He looked down, suddenly recalled to a reality other than the splendor of the morning, the rapture of this careless festa day. And again he was conscious of the shadow. Along this line, in a few hours, would come the train bearing Hermione and Artois. Hermione would be at the window, eagerly looking out, full of happy anticipation, leaning to catch the first sight of his face, to receive and return his smile of welcome. What would her face be like when—? But Salvatore was hailing him from the sea. Maddalena was waving her hand. The thing was done. The die was cast. He had chosen his lot. Fiercely he put away from him the thought of Hermione, lifted his voice in an answering hail, his hand in a salutation which he tried to make carelessly joyous. The boat glided in between the flat rocks. And then—then he was able to forget. For Maddalena's long eyes were looking into his, with the joyousness of a child's, and yet with something of the expectation of a woman's, too. And her brown face was alive with a new and delicious self-consciousness, asking him to praise her for the surprise she had prepared, in his honor surely, specially for him, and not for her comrades and the public of the fair.