"And you would like always to be at the fair?"

"Si, signore, always."

There was a great conviction in her simple statement.

"And you, signorino?"

She was curious about him to-night.

"I don't know what I should like," he said.

He looked up at the great darkness of Etna, and again a longing came to him to climb up, far up, into those beech forests that looked towards the Isles of Lipari. He wanted greater freedom. Even the fair was prison.

"But I think," he said, after a pause—"I think I should like to carry you off, Maddalena, up there, far up on Etna."

He remembered his feeling when he had put his arms round her in the dance. It had been like putting his arms round ignorance that wanted to be knowledge. Who would be Maddalena's teacher? Not he. And yet he had almost intended to have his revenge upon Salvatore.

"Shall we go now?" he said. "Shall we go off to Etna, Maddalena?"

"Signorino!"

She gave a little laugh.

"We must go home after the fireworks."

"Why should we? Why should we not take the donkeys now? Gaspare is dancing. Your father is playing cards. No one would notice. Shall we? Shall we go now and get the donkeys, Maddalena?"

But she replied:

"A girl can only go like that with a man when she is married."

"That's not true," he said. "She can go like that with a man she loves."

"But then she is wicked, and the Madonna will not hear her when she prays, signorino."

"Wouldn't you do anything for a man you really loved? Wouldn't you forget everything? Wouldn't you forget even the Madonna?"

She looked at him.

"Non lo so."

It seemed to him that he was answered.

"Wouldn't you forget the Madonna for me?" he whispered, leaning towards her.

There was a loud report close to them, a whizzing noise, a deep murmur from the crowd, and in the clear sky above Etna the first rocket burst, showering down a cataract of golden stars, which streamed towards the earth, leaving trails of fire behind them.

The sound of the grinding organ and of the shepherd boy's flute ceased in the dancing-room, and the crowd within rushed out into the market-place.

"Signorino! Signorino! Come with me! We cannot see properly here! I know where to go. There will be wheels of fire, and masses of flowers, and a picture of the Regina Margherita. Presto! Presto!"

Gaspare had hold of Maurice by the arm.

"E' finito!" Maurice murmured.

It seemed to him that the last day of his wild youth was at an end.

"E' finito!" he repeated.

But there was still an hour.

And who can tell what an hour will bring forth?



XVII

It was nearly two o'clock in the morning when Maurice and Gaspare said good-bye to Maddalena and her father on the road by Isola Bella. Salvatore had left the three donkeys at Cattaro, and had come the rest of the way on foot, while Maddalena rode Gaspare's beast.

"The donkey you bought is for Maddalena," Maurice had said to him.

And the fisherman had burst into effusive thanks. But already he had his eye on a possible customer in Cattaro. As soon as the Inglese had gone back to his own country the donkey would be resold at a good price. What did a fisherman want with donkeys, and how was an animal to be stabled on the Sirens' Isle? As soon as the Inglese was gone, Salvatore meant to put a fine sum of money into his pocket.

"Addio, signorino!" he said, sweeping off his hat with the wild, half-impudent gesture that was peculiar to him. "I kiss your hand and I kiss the hand of your signora."

He bent down his head as if he were going to translate the formal phrase into an action, but Maurice drew back.

"Addio, Salvatore," he said.

His voice was low.

"Addio, Maddalena!" he added.

She murmured something in reply. Salvatore looked keenly from one to the other.

"Are you tired, Maddalena?" he asked, with a sort of rough suspicion.

"Si," she answered.

She followed him slowly across the railway line towards the sea, while Maurice and Gaspare turned their donkeys' heads towards the mountain.

They rode upward in silence. Gaspare was sleepy. His head nodded loosely as he rode, but his hands never let go their careful hold of the clock. Round about him his many purchases were carefully disposed, fastened elaborately to the big saddle. The roses, faded now, were still above his ears. Maurice rode behind. He was not sleepy. He felt as if he would never sleep again.

As they drew nearer to the house of the priest, Gaspare pulled himself together with an effort, half-turned on his donkey, and looked round at his padrone.

"Signorino!"

"Si."

"Do you think the signora will be asleep?"

"I don't know. I suppose so."

The boy looked wise.

"I do not think so," he said, firmly.

"What—at three o'clock in the morning!"

"I think the signora will be on the terrace watching for us."

Maurice's lips twitched.

"Chi lo sa?" he replied.

He tried to speak carelessly, but where was his habitual carelessness of spirit, his carelessness of a boy now? He felt that he had lost it forever, lost it in that last hour of the fair.

"Signorino!"

"Well?"

"Where were you and Maddalena when I was helping with the fireworks?"

"Close by."

"Did you see them all? Did you see the Regina Margherita?"

"Si."

"I looked round for you, but I could not see you."

"There was such a crowd and it was dark."

"Yes. Then you were there, where I left you?"

"We may have moved a little, but we were not far off."

"I cannot think why I could not find you when the fireworks were over."

"It was the crowd. I thought it best to go to the stable without searching for you. I knew you and Salvatore would be there."

The boy was silent for a moment. Then he said:

"Salvatore was very angry when he saw me come into the stable without you."

"Why?"

"He said I ought not to have left my padrone."

"And what did you say?"

"I told him I would not be spoken to by him. If you had not come in just then I think there would have been a baruffa. Salvatore is a bad man, and always ready with his knife. And he had been drinking."

"He was quiet enough coming home."

"I do not like his being so quiet."

"What does it matter?"

Again there was a pause. Then Gaspare said:

"Now that the signora has come back we shall not go any more to the Casa delle Sirene, shall we?"

"No, I don't suppose we shall go any more."

"It is better like that, signorino. It is much better that we do not go."

Maurice said nothing.

"We have been there too often," added Gaspare. "I am glad the signora has come back. I am sorry she ever went away."

"It was not our fault that she went," Maurice said, in a hard voice like that of a man trying to justify something, to defend himself against some accusation. "We did not want the signora to go."

"No, signore."

Gaspare's voice sounded almost apologetic. He was a little startled by his padrone's tone.

"It was a pity she went," he continued. "The poor signora——"

"Why is it such a pity?" Maurice interrupted, almost roughly, almost suspiciously. "Why do you say 'the poor signora'?"

Gaspare stared at him with open surprise.

"I only meant——"

"The signora wished to go to Africa. She decided for herself. There is no reason to call her the poor signora."

"No, signore."

The boy's voice recalled Maurice to prudence.

"It was very good of her to go," he said, more quietly. "Perhaps she has saved the life of the sick signore by going."

"Si, signore."

Gaspare said no more, but as they rode up, drawing ever nearer to the bare mountain-side and the house of the priest, Maurice's heart reiterated the thought of the boy. Why had Hermione ever gone? What a madness it had all been, her going, his staying! He knew it now for a madness, a madness of the summer, of the hot, the burning south. In this terrible quiet of the mountains, without the sun, without the laughter and the voices and the movement of men, he understood that he had been mad, that there had been something in him, not all himself, which had run wild, despising restraint. And he had known that it was running wild, and he had thought to let it go just so far and no farther. He had set a limit of time to his wildness and its deeds. And he had set another limit. Surely he had. He had not ever meant to go too far. And then, just when he had said to himself "E' finito!" the irrevocable was at hand, the moment of delirium in which all things that should have been remembered were forgotten. What had led him? What spirit of evil? Or had he been led at all? Had not he rather deliberately forced his way to the tragic goal whither, through all these sunlit days, these starry nights, his feet had been tending?

He looked upon himself as a man looks upon a stranger whom he has seen commit a crime which he could never have committed. Mentally he took himself into custody, he tried, he condemned himself. In this hour of acute reaction the cool justice of the Englishman judged the passionate impulse of the Sicilian, even marvelled at it, and the heart of the dancing Faun cried: "What am I—what am I really?" and did not find the answer.

"Signorino?"

"Yes, Gaspare."

"When we get to that rock we shall see the house."

"I know."

How eagerly he had looked upward to the little white house on the mountain on that first day in Sicily, with what joy of anticipation, with what an exquisite sense of liberty and of peace! The drowsy wail of the "Pastorale" had come floating down to him over the olive-trees almost like a melody that stole from paradise. But now he dreaded the turn of the path. He dreaded to see the terrace wall, the snowy building it protected. And he felt as if he were drawing near to a terror, and as if he could not face it, did not know how to face it.

"Signorino, there is no light! Look!"

"The signora and Lucrezia must be asleep at this hour."

"If they are, what are we to do? Shall we wake them?"

"No, no."

He spoke quickly, in hope of a respite.

"We will wait—we will not disturb them."

Gaspare looked down at the parcel he was holding with such anxious care.

"I would like to play the 'Tre Colori,'" he said. "I would like the first thing the signora hears when she wakes to be the 'Tre Colori.'"

"Hush! We must be very quiet."

The noise made on the path by the tripping feet of the donkeys was almost intolerable to him. It must surely wake the deepest sleeper. They were now on the last ascent where the mountain-side was bare. Some stones rattled downward, causing a sharp, continuous sound. It was answered by another sound, which made both Gaspare and Maurice draw rein and pull up.

As on that first day in Sicily Maurice had been welcomed by the "Pastorale," so he was welcomed by it now. What an irony that was to him! For an instant his lips curved in a bitter smile. But the smile died away as he realized things, and a strange sadness took hold of his heart. For it was not the ceramella that he heard in this still hour, but a piano played softly, monotonously, with a dreamy tenderness that made it surely one with the tenderness of the deep night. And he knew that Hermione had been watching, that she had heard him coming, that this was her welcome, a welcome from the depths of her pure, true heart. How much the music told him! How clearly it spoke to him! And how its caress flagellated his bare soul! Hermione had returned expectant of welcome and had found nothing, and instead of coming out upon the terrace, instead of showing surprise, vexation, jealous curiosity, of assuming the injured air that even a good woman can scarcely resist displaying in a moment of acute disappointment, she sent forth this delicate salutation to him from afar, the sweetest that she knew, the one she herself loved best.

Tears came into his eyes as he listened. Then he shut his eyes and said to himself, shuddering:

"Oh, you beast! You beast!"

"It is the signora!" said Gaspare, turning round on his donkey. "She does not know we are here, and she is playing to keep herself awake."

He looked down at his clock, and his eyes began to shine.

"I am glad the signora is awake!" he said. "Signorino, let us get off the donkeys and leave them at the arch, and let us go in without any noise."

"But perhaps the signora knows that we are here," Maurice said.

Directly he had heard the music he had known that Hermione was aware of their approach.

"No, no, signore. I am sure she does not, or she would have come out to meet us. Let us leave the donkeys!"

He sprang off softly. Mechanically, Maurice followed his example.

"Now, signore!"

The boy took him by the hand and led him on tiptoe to the terrace, making him crouch down close to the open French window. The "Pastorale" was louder here. It never ceased, but returned again and again with the delicious monotony that made it memorable and wove a spell round those who loved it. As he listened to it, Maurice fancied he could hear the breathing of the player, and he felt that she was listening, too, listening tensely for footsteps on the terrace.

Gaspare looked up at him with bright eyes. The boy's whole face was alive with a gay and mischievous happiness, as he turned the handle at the back of his clock slowly, slowly, till at last it would turn no more. Then there tinkled forth to join the "Pastorale" the clear, trilling melody of the "Tre Colori."

The music in the room ceased abruptly. There was a rustling sound as the player moved. Then Hermione's voice, with something trembling through it that was half a sob, half a little burst of happy laughter, called out:

"Gaspare, how dare you interrupt my concert?"

"Signora! Signora!" cried Gaspare, and, springing up, he darted into the sitting-room.

But Maurice, though he lifted himself up quickly, stood where he was with his hand set hard against the wall of the house. He heard Gaspare kiss Hermione's hand. Then he heard her say:

"But, but, Gaspare——"

He took his hand from the wall with an effort. His feet seemed glued to the ground, but at last he was in the room.

"Hermione!" he said.

"Maurice!"

He felt her strong hands, strong and yet soft like all the woman, on his.

"Cento di questi giorni!" she said. "Ah, but it is better than all the birthdays in the world!"

He wanted to kiss her—not to please her, but for himself he wanted to kiss her—but he dared not. He felt that if his lips were to touch hers—she must know. To excuse his avoidance of the natural greeting he looked at Gaspare.

"I know!" she whispered. "You haven't forgotten!"

She was alluding to that morning on the terrace when he came up from the fishing. They loosed their hands. Gaspare set the clock playing again.

"What a beauty!" Hermione said, glad to hide her emotion for a moment till she and Maurice could be alone. "What a marvel! Where did you find it, Gaspare—at the fair?"

"Si, signora!"

Solemnly he handed it, still playing brightly, to his padrona, just a little reluctantly, perhaps, but very gallantly.

"It is for you, signora."

"A present—oh, Gaspare!"

Again her voice was veiled. She put out her hand and touched the boy's hand.

"Grazie! How sweetly it plays! You thought of me!"

There was a silence till the tune was finished. Then Maurice said:

"Hermione, I don't know what to say. That we should be at the fair the day you arrived! Why—why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you write?"

"You didn't know, then!"

The words came very quickly, very eagerly.

"Know! Didn't Lucrezia tell you that we had no idea?"

"Poor Lucrezia! She's in a dreadful condition. I found her in the village."

"No!" Maurice cried, thankful to turn the conversation from himself, though only for an instant. "I specially told her to stay here. I specially——"

"Well, but, poor thing, as you weren't expecting me! But I wrote, Maurice, I wrote a letter telling you everything, the hour we were coming—"

"It's Don Paolo!" exclaimed Gaspare, angrily. "He hides away the letters. He lets them lie sometimes in his office for months. To-morrow I will go and tell him what I think; I will turn out every drawer."

"It is too bad!" Maurice said.

"Then you never had it?"

"Hermione"—he stared at the open door—"you think we should have gone to the fair if——"

"No, no, I never thought so. I only wondered. It all seemed so strange."

"It is too horrible!" Maurice said, with heavy emphasis. "And Artois—no rooms ready for him! What can he have thought?"

"As I did, that there had been a mistake. What does it matter now? Just at the moment I was dreadfully—oh, dreadfully disappointed. I saw Gaspare at the fair. And you saw me, Gaspare?"

"Si, signora. I ran all the way to the station, but the train had gone."

"But I didn't see you, Maurice. Where were you?"

Gaspare opened his lips to speak, but Maurice did not give him time.

"I was there, too, in the fair."

"But of course you weren't looking at the train?"

"Of course not. And when Gaspare told me, it was too late to do anything. We couldn't get back in time, and the donkeys were tired, and so——"

"Oh, I'm glad you didn't hurry back. What good would it have done then?"

There was a touch of constraint in her voice.

"You must have thought I should be in bed."

"Yes, we did."

"And so I ought to be now. I believe I am tremendously tired, but—but I'm so tremendously something else that I hardly know."

The constraint had gone.

"The signora is happy because she is back in my country," Gaspare remarked, with pride and an air of shrewdness.

He nodded his head. The faded roses shook above his ears. Hermione smiled at him.

"He knows all about it," she said. "Well, if we are ever to go to bed——"

Gaspare looked from her to his padrone.

"Buona notte, signora," he said, gravely. "Buona notte, signorino. Buon riposo!"

"Buon riposo!" echoed Hermione. "It is blessed to hear that again. I do love the clock, Gaspare."

The boy beamed at her and went reluctantly away to find the donkeys. At that moment Maurice would have given almost anything to keep him. He dreaded unspeakably to be alone with Hermione. But it had to be. He must face it. He must seem natural, happy.

"Shall I put the clock down?" he asked.

He went to her, took the clock, carried it to the writing-table, and put it down.

"Gaspare was so happy to bring it to you."

He turned. He felt desperate. He came to Hermione and put out his hands.

"I feel so bad that we weren't here," he said.

"That is it!"

There was a sound of deep relief in her voice. Then she had been puzzled by his demeanor! He must be natural; but how? It seemed to him as if never in all his life could he have felt innocent, careless, brave. Now he was made of cowardice. He was like a dog that crawls with its belly to the floor. He got hold of Hermione's hands.

"I feel—I feel horribly, horribly bad!"

Speaking the absolute truth, his voice was absolutely sincere, and he deceived her utterly.

"Maurice," she said, "I believe it's upset you so much that—that you are shy of me."

She laughed happily.

"Shy—of me!"

He tried to laugh, too, and kissed her abruptly, awkwardly. All his natural grace was gone from him. But when he kissed her she did not know it; her lips clung to his with a tender passion, a fealty that terrified him.

"She must know!" he thought. "She must feel the truth. My lips must tell it to her."

And when at last they drew away from each other his eyes asked her furiously a question, asked it of her eyes.

"What is it, Maurice?"

He said nothing. She dropped her eyes and reddened slowly, till she looked much younger than usual, strangely like a girl.

"You haven't—you haven't——"

There was a sound of reserve in her voice, and yet a sound of triumph, too. She looked up at him again.

"Do you guess that I have something to tell you?" she said, slowly.

"Something to tell me?" he repeated, dully.

He was so intent on himself, on his own evil-doing, that it seemed to him as if everything must have some connection with it.

"Ah," she said, quickly; "no, I see you weren't."

"What is it?" he asked, but without real interest.

"I can't tell you now," she said.

Gaspare went by the window leading the donkeys.

"Buona notte, signora!"

It was a very happy voice.

"Buona notte, Gaspare. Sleep well."

Maurice caught at the last words.

"We must sleep," he said. "To-morrow we'll—we'll——"

"Tell each other everything. Yes, to-morrow!"

She put her arm through his.

"Maurice, if you knew how I feel!"

"Yes?" he said, trying to make his voice eager, buoyant. "Yes?"

"If you knew how I've been longing to be back! And so often I've thought that I never should be here with you again, just in the way we were!"

He cleared his throat.

"Why?"

"It is so difficult to repeat a great, an intense happiness, I think. But we will, we are repeating it, aren't we?"

"Yes."

"When I got to the station to-day, and—and you weren't there, I had a dreadful foreboding. It was foolish. The explanation of your not being there was so simple. Of course I might have guessed it."

"Of course."

"But in the first moment I felt as if you weren't there because I had lost you forever, because you had been taken away from me forever. It was such an intense feeling that it frightened me—it frightened me horribly. Put your arm round me, Maurice. Let me feel what an idiot I have been!"

He obeyed her and put his arm round her, and he felt as if his arm must tell her what she had not learned from his lips. And she thought that now he must know the truth she had not told him.

"Don't think of dreadful things," he said.

"I won't any more. I don't think I could with you. To me you always mean the sun, light, and life, and all that is brave and beautiful!"

He took his arm away from her.

"Come, we must sleep, Hermione!" he said. "It's nearly dawn. I can almost see the smoke on Etna."

He shut the French window and drew the bolt.

She had gone into the bedroom and was standing by the dressing-table. She did not know why, but a great shyness had come upon her. It was like a cloud enveloping her. Never before had she felt like this with Maurice, not even when they were first married. She had loved him too utterly to be shy with him. Maurice was still in the sitting-room, fastening the shutters of the window. She heard the creak of wood, the clatter of the iron bar falling into the fastener. Now he would come.

But he did not come. He was moving about in the room. She heard papers rustling, then the lid of the piano shut down. He was putting everything in order.

This orderliness was so unusual in Maurice that it made a disagreeable impression upon her. She began to feel as if he did not want to come into the bedroom, as if he were trying to put off the moment of coming. She remembered that he had seemed shy of her. What had come to them both to-night? Her instinct moved her to break through this painful, this absurd constraint.

"Maurice!" she called.

"Yes."

His voice sounded odd to her, almost like the voice of some other man, some stranger.

"Aren't you coming?"

"Yes. Hermione."

But still he did not come. After a moment, he said:

"It's awfully hot to-night!"

"After Africa it seems quite cool to me."

"Does it? I've been—since you've been away I've been sleeping nearly always out-of-doors on the terrace."

Now he came to the doorway and stood there. He looked at the white room, at Hermione. She had on a white tea-gown. It seemed to him that everything here was white, everything but his soul. He felt as if he could not come into this room, could not sleep here to-night, as if it would be a desecration. When he stood in the doorway the painful shyness returned to her.

"Have you?" she said.

"Yes."

"Do you—would you rather sleep there to-night?"

She did not mean to say it. It was the last thing she wished to say. Yet she said it. It seemed to her that she was forced to say it.

"Well, it's much cooler there."

She was silent.

"I could just put one or two rugs and cushions on the seat by the wall," he said. "I shall sleep like a top. I'm awfully tired!"

"But—but the sun will soon be up, won't it?"

"Oh—then I can come in."

"All right."

"I'll take the rugs from the sitting-room. I say—how's Artois?"

"Much better, but he's still weak."

"Poor chap!"

"He'll ride up to-morrow on a donkey."

"Good! I'm—I'm most awfully sorry about his rooms."

"What does it matter? I've made them quite nice already. He's perfectly comfortable."

"I'm glad. It's all—it's all been such a pity—about to-day, I mean."

"Don't let's think of it! Don't let's think of it any more."

A passionate sound had stolen into her voice. She moved a step towards him. A sudden idea had come to her, an idea that stirred within her a great happiness, that made a flame of joy spring up in her heart.

"Maurice, you—you——"

"What is it?" he asked.

"You aren't vexed at my staying away so long? You aren't vexed at my bringing Emile back with me?"

"No, of course not," he said. "But—but I wish you hadn't gone away."

And then he disappeared into the sitting-room, collected the rugs and cushions, opened the French window, and went out upon the terrace. Presently he called out:

"I shall sleep as I am, Hermione, without undressing. I'm awfully done. Good-night."

"Good-night!" she called.

There was a quiver in her voice. And yet that flame of happiness had not quite died down. She said to herself:

"He doesn't want me to know. He's too proud. But he has been a little jealous, perhaps." She remembered how Sicilian he was.

"But I'll make him forget it all," she thought, eagerly. "To-morrow—to-morrow it will be all right. He's missed me, he's missed me!"

That thought was very sweet to her. It seemed to explain all things; this constraint of her husband, which had reacted upon her, this action of his in preferring to sleep outside—everything. He had always been like a boy. He was like a boy now. He could not conceal his feelings. He did not doubt her. She knew that. But he had been a little jealous about her friendship for Emile.

She undressed. When she was ready for bed she hesitated a moment. Then she put a white shawl round her shoulders and stole quickly out of the room. She came upon the terrace. The stars were waning. The gray of the dawn was in the sky towards the east. Maurice, stretched upon the rugs, with his face turned towards the terrace wall, was lying still. She went to him, bent down, and kissed him.

"I love you," she whispered—"oh, so much!"

She did not wait, but went away at once. When she was gone he put up his hand to his face. On his cheek there was a tear.

"God forgive me!" he said to himself. "God forgive me!"

His body was shaken by a sob.



XVIII

When the sun came up over the rim of the sea Maurice ceased from his pretence of sleep, raised himself on his elbow, then sat upright and looked over the ravine to the rocks of the Sirens' Isle. The name seemed to him now a fatal name, and everything connected with his sojourn in Sicily fatal. Surely there had been a malign spirit at work. In this early morning hour his brain, though unrefreshed by sleep, was almost unnaturally clear, feverishly busy. Something had met him when he first set foot in Sicily—so he thought now—had met him with a fixed and evil purpose. And that purpose had never been abandoned.

Old superstitions, inherited perhaps from a long chain of credulous Sicilian ancestors, were stirring in him. He did not laugh at his idea, as a pure-blooded Englishman would have laughed. He pondered it. He cherished it.

On his very first evening in Sicily the spirit had led him to the wall, had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. He remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when Hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps to gaze down on it once more. Then he had not known why he gazed. Now he knew. The spirit that had met him by the sea in Sicily had whispered to him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise.

He dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been obliged to obey. It was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred of himself. The fatalism that is linked with superstition got hold upon him and comforted him a little. He had not been a free agent. He had had to do as he had done. Everything had been arranged so that he might sin. The night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair. If Hermione had stayed—but of course she had not stayed. The spirit that had kept him in Sicily had sent her across the sea to Africa. In the full flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. Newly married, he had been abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a noble, reason. Still, he had been abandoned—to himself and the keeping of that spirit. Was it any wonder that he had fallen? He strove to think that it was not. In the night he had cowered before Hermione and had been cruel with himself. Now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. He strove to find excuses for himself. If he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the day, face Hermione in sunlight.

And now that the spirit had led him thus far, surely its work was done, surely it would leave him alone. He tried to believe that.

Then he thought of Maddalena.

She was there, down there where the rising sun glittered on the sea. She surely was awake, as he was awake. She was thinking, wondering—perhaps weeping.

He got up. He could not look at the sea any more. The name "House of the Sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought of Maddalena perhaps weeping by the sea.

He had his revenge upon Salvatore, but at what a cost!

Salvatore! The fisherman's face rose up before him. If he ever knew! Maurice remembered his sensation that already, before he had done the fisherman any wrong, the fisherman had condemned him. Now there was a reason for condemnation. He had no physical fear of Salvatore. He was not a man to be physically afraid of another man. But if Salvatore ever knew he might tell. He might tell Hermione. That thought brought with it to Maurice a cold as of winter. The malign spirit might still have a purpose in connection with him, might still be near him full of intention. He felt afraid of the Sicily he had loved. He longed to leave it. He thought of it as an isle of fear, where terrors walked in the midst of the glory of the sunshine, where fatality lurked beside the purple sea.

"Maurice!"

He started. Hermione was on the steps of the sitting-room.

"You're not sleeping!" he said.

He felt as if she had been there reading all his thoughts.

"And you!" she answered.

"The sun woke me."

He lied instinctively. All his life with her would be a lie now, could never be anything else—unless——

He looked at her hard and long in the eyes for the first time since they had met after her return. Suppose he were to tell her, now, at once, in the stillness, the wonderful innocence and clearness of the dawn! For a moment he felt that it would be an exquisite relief, a casting down of an intolerable burden. She had such a splendid nature. She loved sincerity as she loved God. To her it was the one great essential quality, whose presence or absence made or marred the beauty of a human soul. He knew that.

"Why do you look at me like that?" she said, coming down to him with the look of slow strength that was always characteristic of her.

He dropped his eyes.

"I don't know. How do you mean?"

"As if you had something to tell me."

"Perhaps—perhaps I have," he answered.

He was on the verge, the very verge of confession. She put her arm through his. When she touched him the impulse waned, but it did not die utterly away.

"Tell it me," she said. "I love to hear everything you tell me. I don't think you could ever tell me anything that I should not understand."

"Are you—are you sure?"

"I think so."

"But"—he suddenly remembered some words of hers that, till then, he had forgotten—"but you had something to tell me."

"Yes."

"I want to hear it."

He could not speak yet. Perhaps presently he would be able to.

"Let us go up to the top of the mountain," she answered. "I feel as if we could see the whole island from there. And up there we shall get all the wind of the morning."

They turned towards the steep, bare slope and climbed it, while the sun rose higher, as if attending them. At the summit there was a heap of stones.

"Let us sit here," Hermione said. "We can see everything from here, all the glories of the dawn."

"Yes."

He was so intensely preoccupied by the debate within him that he did not remember that it was here, among these stones where they were sitting, that he had hidden the fragments of Hermione's letter from Africa telling him of her return on the day of the fair.

They sat down with their faces towards the sea. The air up here was exquisitely cool. In the pellucid clearness of dawn the coast-line looked enchanted, fairy-like and full of delicate mystery. And its fading, in the far distance, was like a calling voice. Behind them the ranges of mountains held a few filmy white clouds, like laces, about their rugged peaks. The sea was a pale blue stillness, shot with soft grays and mauves and pinks, and dotted here and there with black specks that were the boats of fishermen.

Hermione sat with her hands clasped round her knees. Her face, browned by the African sun, was intense with feeling.

"Yes," she said, at last, "I can tell you here."

She looked at the sea, the coast-line, then turned her head and gazed at the mountains.

"We looked at them together," she continued—"that last evening before I went away. Do you remember, Maurice?"

"Yes."

"From the arch. It is better up here. Always, when I am very happy or very sad, my instinct would be to seek a mountain-top. The sight of great spaces seen from a height teaches one, I think."

"What?"

"Not to be an egoist in one's joy; not to be a craven in one's sorrow. You see, a great view suggests the world, the vastness of things, the multiplicity of life. I think that must be it. And of course it reminds one, too, that one will soon be going away."

"Going away?"

"Yes. 'The mountains will endure'—but we—!"

"Oh, you mean death."

"Yes. What is it makes one think most of death when—when life, new life, is very near?"

She had been gazing at the mountains and the sea, but now she turned and looked into his face.

"Don't you understand what I have to tell you?" she asked.

He shook his head. He was still wondering whether he would dare to tell her of his sin. And he did not know. At one moment he thought that he could do it, at another that he would rather throw himself over the precipice of the mountain than do it.

"I don't understand it at all."

There was a lack of interest in his voice, but she did not notice it. She was full of the wonder of the morning, the wonder of being again with him, and the wonder of what she had to tell him.

"Maurice"—she put her hand on his—"the night I was crossing the sea to Africa I knew. All these days I have kept this secret from you because I could not write it. It seemed to me too sacred. I felt I must be with you when I told it. That night upon the sea I was very sad. I could not sleep. I was on deck looking always back, towards Sicily and you. And just when the dawn was coming I—I knew that a child was coming, too, a child of mine and yours."

She was silent. Her hand pressed his, and now she was again looking towards the sea. And it seemed to him that her face was new, that it was already the face of a mother.

He said nothing and he did not move. He looked down at the heap of stones by which they were sitting, and his eyes rested on a piece of paper covered with writing. It was a fragment of Hermione's letter to him. As he saw it something sharp and cold like a weapon made of ice, seemed to be plunged into him. He got up, pulling hard at her hand. She obeyed his hand.

"What is it?" she said, as they stood together. "You look——"

He had become pale. He knew it.

"Hermione!" he said.

He was actually panting as if he had been running. He moved a few steps towards the edge of the summit. She followed him.

"You are angry that I didn't tell you! But—I wanted to say it. I wanted to—to——"

She lifted his hands to her lips.

"Thank you for giving me a child," she said.

Then tears came into his eyes and ran down over his cheeks. That he should be thanked by her—that scourged the genuine good in him till surely blood started under the strokes.

"Don't thank me!" he said. "Don't do that! I won't have it!"

His voice sounded angry.

"I won't ever let you thank me for anything," he went on. "You must understand that."

He was on the edge of some violent, some almost hysterical outburst. He thought of Gaspare casting himself down in the boat that morning when he had feared that his padrone was drowned. So he longed to cast himself down and cry. But he had the strength to check his impulse. Only, the checking of it seemed to turn him for a moment into something made not of flesh and blood but of iron. And this thing of iron was voiceless.

She knew that he was feeling intensely and respected his silence. But at last it began almost to frighten her. The boyish look she loved had gone out of his face. A stern man stood beside her, a man she had never seen before.

"Maurice," she said, at length. "What is it? I think you are suffering."

"Yes," he said.

"But—but aren't you glad? Surely you are glad?"

To her the word seemed mean, poverty-stricken. She changed it.

"Surely you are thankful?"

"I don't know," he answered, at last. "I am thinking that I don't know that I am worthy to be a father."

He himself had fixed a limit. Now, God was putting a period to his wild youth. And the heart—was that changed within him?

Too much was happening. The cup was being filled too full. A great longing came to him to get away, far away, and be alone. If it had been any other day he would have gone off into the mountains, by himself, have stayed out till night came, have walked, climbed, till he was exhausted. But to-day he could not do that. And soon Artois would be coming. He felt as if something must snap in brain or heart.

And he had not slept. How he wished that he could sleep for a little while and forget everything. In sleep one knows nothing. He longed to be able to sleep.

"I understand that," she said. "But you are worthy, my dear one."

When she said that he knew that he could never tell her.

"I must try," he muttered. "I'll try—from to-day."

She did not talk to him any more. Her instinct told her not to. Almost directly they were walking down to the priest's house. She did not know which of them had moved first.

When they got there they found Lucrezia up. Her eyes were red, but she smiled at Hermione. Then she looked at the padrone with alarm. She expected him to blame her for having disobeyed his orders of the day before. But he had forgotten all about that.

"Get breakfast, Lucrezia," Hermione said. "We'll have it on the terrace. And presently we must have a talk. The sick signore is coming up to-day for collazione. We must have a very nice collazione, but something wholesome."

"Si, signora."

Lucrezia went away to the kitchen thankfully. She had heard bad news of Sebastiano yesterday in the village. He was openly in love with the girl in the Lipari Isles. Her heart was almost breaking, but the return of the padrona comforted her a little. Now she had some one to whom she could tell her trouble, some one who would sympathize.

"I'll go and take a bath, Hermione," Maurice said.

And he, too, disappeared.

Hermione went to talk to Gaspare and tell him what to get in Marechiaro.

When breakfast was ready Maurice came back looking less pale, but still unboyish. All the bright sparkle to which Hermione was accustomed had gone out of him. She wondered why. She had expected the change in him to be a passing thing, but it persisted.

At breakfast it was obviously difficult for him to talk. She sought a reason for his strangeness. Presently she thought again of Artois. Could he be the reason? Or was Maurice now merely preoccupied by that great, new knowledge that there would soon be a third life mingled with theirs? She wondered exactly what he felt about that. He was really such a boy at heart despite his set face of to-day. Perhaps he dreaded the idea of responsibility. His agitation upon the mountain-top had been intense. Perhaps he was rendered unhappy by the thought of fatherhood. Or was it Emile?

When breakfast was over, and he was smoking, she said to him:

"Maurice, I want to ask you something."

A startled look came into his eyes.

"What?" he said, quickly.

He threw his cigarette away and turned towards her, with a sort of tenseness that suggested to her a man bracing himself for some ordeal.

"Only about Emile."

"Oh!" he said.

He took another cigarette, and his attitude at once looked easier. She wondered why.

"You don't mind about Emile being here, do you?"

Maurice was nearly answering quickly that he was delighted to welcome him. But a suddenly born shrewdness prevented him. To-day, like a guilty man, he was painfully conscious, painfully alert. He knew that Hermione was wondering about him, and realized that her question afforded him an opportunity to be deceptive and yet to seem quite natural and truthful. He could not be as he had been, to-day. The effort was far too difficult for him. Hermione's question showed him a plausible excuse for his peculiarity of demeanor and conduct. He seized it.

"I think it was very natural for you to bring him," he answered.

He lit the cigarette. His hand was trembling slightly.

"But—but you had rather I hadn't brought him?"

As Maurice began to act a part an old feeling returned to him, and almost turned his lie into truth.

"You could hardly expect me to wish to have Artois with us here, could you, Hermione?" he said, slowly.

She scarcely knew whether she were most pained or pleased. She was pained that anything she had done had clouded his happiness, but she was intensely glad to think he loved to be quite alone with her.

"No, I felt that. But I felt, too, as if it would be cruel to stop short, unworthy in us."

"In us?"

"Yes. You let me go to Africa. You might have asked me, you might even have told me, not to go. I did not think of it at the time. Everything went so quickly. But I have thought of it since. And, knowing that, realizing it, I feel that you had your part, a great part, in Emile's rescue. For I do believe, Maurice, that if I had not gone he would have died."

"Then I am glad you went."

He spoke perfunctorily, almost formally. Hermione felt chilled.

"It seemed to me that, having begun to do a good work, it would be finer, stronger, to carry it quite through, to put aside our own desires and think of another who had passed through a great ordeal. Was I wrong, Maurice? Emile is still very weak, very dependent. Ought I to have said, 'Now I see you're not going to die, I'll leave you at once.' Wouldn't it have been rather selfish, even rather brutal?"

His reply startled her.

"Have you—have you ever thought of where we are?" he said.

"Where we are!"

"Of the people we are living among?"

"I don't think I understand."

He cleared his throat.

"They're Sicilians. They don't see things as the English do," he said.

There was a silence. Hermione felt a heat rush over her, over all her body and face. She did not speak, because, if she had, she might have said something vehement, even headstrong, such as she had never said, surely never would say, to Maurice.

"Of course I understand. It's not that," he added.

"No, it couldn't be that," she said. "You needn't tell me."

The hot feeling stayed with her. She tried to control it.

"You surely can't mind what ignorant people out here think of an utterly innocent action!" she said, at last, very quietly.

But even as she spoke she remembered the Sicilian blood in him.

"You have minded it!" she said. "You do mind now."

And suddenly she felt very tender over him, as she might have felt over a child. In his face she could not see the boy to-day, but his words set the boy, the inmost nature of the boy that he still surely was, before her.

The sense of humor in her seemed to be laughing and wiping away a tear at the same time.

She moved her chair close to his.

"Maurice," she said. "Do you know that sometimes you make me feel horribly old and motherly?"

"Do I?" he said.

"You do to-day, and yet—do you know that I have been thinking since I came back that you are looking older, much older than when I went away?"

"Is that Artois?" he said, looking over the wall to the mountain-side beyond the ravine.

Hermione got up, leaned upon the wall, and followed his eyes.

"I think it must be. I told Gaspare to go to the hotel when he fetched the provisions in Marechiaro and tell Emile it would be best to come up in the cool. Yes, it is he, and Gaspare is with him! Maurice, you don't mind so very much?"

She put her arm through his.

"These people can't talk when they see how ill he looks. And if they do—oh, Maurice, what does it matter? Surely there's only one thing in the world that matters, and that is whether one can look one's own conscience in the face and say, 'I've nothing to be ashamed of!'"

Maurice longed to get away from the touch of her arm. He remembered the fragment of paper he had seen among the stones on the mountain-side. He must go up there alone directly he had a moment of freedom. But now—Artois! He stared at the distant donkeys. His brain felt dry and shrivelled, his body both feverish and tired. How could he support this long day's necessities? It seemed to him that he had not the strength and resolution to endure them. And Artois was so brilliant! Maurice thought of him at that moment as a sort of monster of intellectuality, terrifying and repellent.

"Don't you think so?" Hermione said.

"I dare say," he answered. "But I dare say, I suppose—very few of us can do that. We can't expect to be perfect, and other people oughtn't to expect it of us."

His voice had changed. Before, it had been almost an accusing voice and insincere. Now it was surely a voice that pleaded, and it was absolutely sincere. Hermione remembered how in London long ago the humility of Maurice had touched her. He had stood out from the mass of conceited men because of his beauty and his simple readiness to sit at the feet of others. And surely the simplicity, the humility, still persisted beautifully in him.

"I don't think I should ever expect anything of you that you wouldn't give me," she said to him. "Anything of loyalty, of straightness, or of manhood. Often you seem to me a boy, and yet, I know, if a danger came to me, or a trouble, I could lean on you and you would never fail me. That's what a woman loves to feel when she has given herself to a man, that he knows how to take care of her, and that he cares to take care of her."

Her body was touching his. He felt himself stiffen. The mental pain he suffered under the lash of her words affected his body, and his knowledge of the necessity to hide all that was in his mind caused his body to long for isolation, to shrink from any contact with another.

"I hope," he said, trying to make his voice natural and simple——"I hope you'll never be in trouble or in danger, Hermione."

"I don't think I could mind very much if you were there, if I could just touch your hand."

"Here they come!" he said. "I hope Artois isn't very tired with the ride. We ought to have had Sebastiano here to play the 'Pastorale' for him."

"Ah! Sebastiano!" said Hermione. "He's playing it for some one else in the Lipari Islands. Poor Lucrezia! Maurice, I love Sicily and all things Sicilian. You know how much! But—but I'm glad you've got some drops of English blood in your veins. I'm glad you aren't all Sicilian."

"Come," he said. "Let us go to the arch and meet him."



XIX

"So this is your Garden of Paradise?" Artois said.

He got off his donkey slowly at the archway, and stood for a moment, after shaking them both by the hand, looking at the narrow terrace, bathed in sunshine despite the shelter of the awning, at the columns, at the towering rocks which dominated the grove of oak-trees, and at the low, white-walled cottage.

"The garden from which you came to save my life," he added.

He turned to Maurice.

"I am grateful and I am ashamed," he said. "I was not your friend, monsieur, but you have treated me with more than friendship. I thank you in words now, but my hope is that some day I shall be given the opportunity to thank you with an act."

He held out his hand again to Maurice. There had been a certain formality in his speech, but there was a warmth in his manner that was not formal. As Maurice held his hand the eyes of the two men met, and each took swift note of the change in the other.

Artois's appearance was softened by his illness. In health he looked authoritative, leonine, very sure of himself, piercingly observant, sometimes melancholy, but not anxious. His manner, never blustering or offensive, was usually dominating, the manner of one who had the right to rule in the things of the intellect. Now he seemed much gentler, less intellectual, more emotional. One received, at a first meeting with him, the sensation rather of coming into contact with a man of heart than with a man of brains. Maurice felt the change at once, and was surprised by it. Outwardly the novelist was greatly altered. His tall frame was shrunken and slightly bent. The face was pale and drawn, the eyes were sunken, the large-boned body was frightfully thin and looked uncertain when it moved. As Maurice gazed he realized that this man had been to the door of death, almost over the threshold of the door.

And Artois? He saw a change in the Mercury whom he had last seen at the door of the London restaurant, a change that startled him.

"Come into our Garden of Paradise and rest," said Hermione. "Lean on my arm, Emile."

"May I?" Artois asked of Maurice, with a faint smile that was almost pathetic.

"Please do. You must be tired!"

Hermione and Artois walked slowly forward to the terrace, arm linked in arm. Maurice was about to follow them when he felt a hand catch hold of him, a hand that was hot and imperative.

"Gaspare! What is it?"

"Signorino, signorino, I must speak to you!"

Startled, Maurice looked into the boy's flushed face. The great eyes searched him fiercely.

"Put the donkeys in the stable," Maurice said. "I'll come."

"Come behind the house, signorino. Ah, Madonna!"

The last exclamation was breathed out with an intensity that was like the intensity of despair. The boy's look and manner were tragic.

"Gaspare," Maurice said, "what——?"

He saw Hermione turning towards him.

"I'll come in a minute, Gaspare."

"Madonna!" repeated the boy. "Madonna!"

He held up his hands and let them drop to his sides. Then he muttered something—a long sentence—in dialect. His voice sounded like a miserable old man's.

"Ah—ah!"

He called to the donkeys and drove them forward to the out-house. Maurice followed.

What had happened? Gaspare had the manner, the look, of one confronted by a terror from which there was no escape. His eyes had surely at the same time rebuked and furiously pitied his master. What did they mean?

"This is our Garden of Paradise!" Hermione was saying as Maurice came up to her and Artois. "Do you wonder that we love it?"

"I wonder that you left it." Artois replied.

He was sunk in a deep straw chair, a chaise longue piled up with cushions, facing the great and radiant view. After he had spoken he sighed.

"I don't think," he said, "that either of you really know that this is Eden. That knowledge has been reserved for the interloper, for me."

Hermione sat down close to him. Maurice was standing by the wall, listening furtively to the noises from the out-house, where Gaspare was unsaddling the donkeys. Artois glanced at him, and was more sharply conscious of change in him. To Artois this place, after the long journey, which had sorely tried his feeble body, seemed an enchanted place of peace, a veritable Elysian Field in which the saddest, the most driven man must surely forget his pain and learn how to rest and to be joyful in repose. But he felt that his host, the man who had been living in paradise, who ought surely to have been learning its blessed lessons through sunlit days and starry nights, was restless like a man in a city, was anxious, was intensely ill at ease. Once, watching this man, Artois had thought of the messenger, poised on winged feet, radiantly ready for movement that would be exquisite because it would be obedient. This man still looked ready for flight, but for a flight how different! As Artois was thinking this Maurice moved.

"Excuse me just for an instant!" he said. "I want to speak to Gaspare."

He saw now that Gaspare was taking into the cottage the provisions that had been carried up by the donkey from Marechiaro.

"I—I told him to do something for me in the village," he added, "and I want just to know—"

He looked at them, almost defiantly, as if he challenged them not to believe what he had said. Then, without finishing his sentence, he went quickly into the cottage.

"You have chosen your garden well," Artois said to Hermione directly they were alone. "No other sea has ever given to me such an impression of tenderness and magical space as this; no other sea has surely ever had a horizon-line so distant from those who look as this."

He went on talking about the beauty, leading her with him. He feared lest she might begin to speak about her husband.

Meanwhile, Maurice had reached the mountain-side behind the house and was waiting there for Gaspare. He heard the boy's voice in the kitchen speaking to Lucrezia, angrily it seemed by the sound. Then the voice ceased and Gaspare appeared for an instant at the kitchen door, making violent motions with his arms towards the mountain. He disappeared. What did he want? What did he mean? The gestures had been imperative. Maurice looked round. A little way up the mountain there was a large, closed building, like a barn, built of stones. It belonged to a contadino, but Maurice had never seen it open, or seen any one going to or coming from it. As he stared at it an idea occurred to him. Perhaps Gaspare meant him to go and wait there, behind the barn, so that Lucrezia should not see or hear their colloquy. He resolved to do this, and went swiftly up the hill-side. When he was in the shadow of the building he waited. He did not know what was the matter, what Gaspare wanted, but he realized that something had occurred which had stirred the boy to the depths. This something must have occurred while he was at Marechiaro. Before he had time mentally to make a list of possible events in Marechiaro, Maurice heard light feet running swiftly up the mountain, and Gaspare came round the corner, still with the look of tragedy, a wild, almost terrible look in his eyes.

"Signorino," he began at once, in a low voice that was full of the pressure of an intense excitement. "Tell me! Where were you last night when we were making the fireworks go off?"

Maurice felt the blood mount to his face.

"Close to where you left me," he answered.

"Oh, signore! Oh, signore!"

It was almost a cry. The sweat was pouring down the boy's face.

"Ma non e mia colpa! Non e mia colpa!" he exclaimed.

"What do you mean? What has happened, Gaspare?"

"I have seen Salvatore."

His voice was more quiet now. He fixed his eyes almost sternly on his padrone, as if in the effort to read his very soul.

"Well? Well, Gaspare?"

Maurice was almost stammering now. He guessed—he knew what was coming.

"Salvatore came up to me just before I got to the village. I heard him calling, 'Stop!' I stood still. We were on the path not far from the fountain. There was a broken branch on the ground, a branch of olive. Salvatore said: 'Suppose that is your padrone, that branch there!' and he spat on it. He spat on it, signore, he spat—and he spat."

Maurice knew now.

"Go on!" he said.

And this time there was no uncertainty in his voice. Gaspare was breathing hard. His breast rose and fell.

"I was going to strike him in the face, but he caught my hand, and then—Signorino, signorino, what have you done?"

His voice rose. He began to look uncontrolled, distracted, wild, as if he might do some frantic thing.

"Gaspare! Gaspare!"

Maurice had him by the arms.

"Why did you?" panted the boy. "Why did you?"

"Then Salvatore knows?"

Maurice saw that any denial was useless.

"He knows! He knows!"

If Maurice had not held Gaspare tightly the boy would have flung himself down headlong on the ground, to burst into one of those storms of weeping which swept upon him when he was fiercely wrought up. But Maurice would not let him have this relief.

"Gaspare! Listen to me! What is he going to do? What is Salvatore going to do?"

"Santa Madonna! Santa Madonna!"

The boy rocked himself to and fro. He began to invoke the Madonna and the saints. He was beside himself, was almost like one mad.

"Gaspare—in the name of God——!"

"H'sh!"

Suddenly the boy kept still. His face changed, hardened. His body became tense. With his hand still held up in a warning gesture, he crept to the edge of the barn and looked round it.

"What is it?" Maurice whispered.

Gaspare stole back.

"It is only Lucrezia. She is spreading the linen. I thought——"

"What is Salvatore going to do?"

"Unless you go down to the sea to meet him this evening, signorino, he is coming up here to-night to tell everything to the signora."

Maurice went white.

"I shall go," he said. "I shall go down to the sea."

"Madonna! Madonna!"

"He won't come now? He won't come this morning?"

Maurice spoke almost breathlessly, with his hands on the boy's hands which streamed with sweat. Gaspare shook his head.

"I told him if he came up I would meet him in the path and kill him."

The boy had out a knife.

Maurice put his arm round Gaspare's shoulder. At that moment he really loved the boy.

"Will he come?"

"Only if you do not go."

"I shall go."

"I will come with you, signorino."

"No. I must go alone."

"I will come with you!"

A dogged obstinacy hardened his whole face, made even his shining eyes look cold, like stones.

"Gaspare, you are to stay with the signora. I may miss Salvatore going down. While I am gone he may come up here. The signora is not to speak with him. He is not to come to her."

Gaspare hesitated. He was torn in two by his dual affection, his dual sense of the watchful fidelity he owed to his padrone and to his padrona.

"Va bene," he said, at last, in a half whisper.

He hung down his head like one exhausted.

"How will it finish?" he murmured, as if to himself. "How will it finish?"

"I must go," Maurice said. "I must go now. Gaspare!"

"Si, signore?"

"We must be careful, you and I, to-day. We must not let the signora, Lucrezia, any one suspect that—that we are not just as usual. Do you see?"

"Si, signore."

The boy nodded. His eyes now looked tired.

"And try to keep a lookout, when you can, without drawing the attention of the signora. Salvatore might change his mind and come up. The signora is not to know. She is never to know. Do you think"—he hesitated—"do you think Salvatore has told any one?"

"Non lo so."

The boy was silent. Then he lifted his hands again and said:

"Signorino! Signorino!"

And Maurice seemed to hear at that moment the voice of an accusing angel.

"Gaspare," he said, "I was mad. We men—we are mad sometimes. But now I must be sane. I must do what I can to—I must do what I can—and you must help me."

He held out his hand. Gaspare took it. The grasp of it was strong, that of a man. It seemed to reassure the boy.

"I will always help my padrone," he said.

Then they went down the mountain-side.

It was perhaps very strange—Maurice thought it was—but he felt now less tired, less confused, more master of himself than he had before he had spoken with Gaspare. He even felt less miserable. Face to face with an immediate and very threatening danger, courage leaped up in him, a certain violence of resolve which cleared away clouds and braced his whole being. He had to fight. There was no way out. Well, then, he would fight. He had played the villain, perhaps, but he would not play the poltroon. He did not know what he was going to do, what he could do, but he must act, and act decisively. His wild youth responded to this call made upon it. There was a new light in his eyes as he went down to the cottage, as he came upon the terrace.

Artois noticed it at once, was aware at once that in this marvellous peace to which Hermione had brought him there were elements which had nothing to do with peace.

"What hast thou to do with peace? Turn thee behind me."

These words from the Bible came into his mind as he looked into the eyes of his host, and he felt that Hermione and he were surely near to some drama of which they knew nothing, of which Hermione, perhaps, suspected nothing.

Maurice acted his part. The tonic of near danger gave him strength, even gave him at first a certain subtlety. From the terrace he could see far over the mountain flanks. As one on a tower he watched for the approach of his enemy from the sea, but he did not neglect his two companions. For he was fighting already. When he seemed natural in his cordiality to his guest, when he spoke and laughed, when he apologized for the misfortune of the previous day, he was fighting. The battle with circumstances was joined. He must bear himself bravely in it. He must not allow himself to be overwhelmed.

Nevertheless, there came presently a moment which brought with it a sense of fear.

Hermione got up to go into the house.

"I must see what Lucrezia is doing," she said. "Your collazione must not be a fiasco, Emile."

"Nothing could be a fiasco here, I think," he answered.

She laughed happily.

"But poor Lucrezia is not in paradise," she said. "Ah, why can't every one be happy when one is happy one's self? I always think of that when I——"

She did not finish her sentence in words. Her look at the two men concluded it. Then she turned and went into the house.

"What is the matter with Lucrezia?" asked Artois.

"Oh, she—she's in love with a shepherd called Sebastiano."

"And he's treating her badly?"

"I'm afraid so. He went to the Lipari Isles, and he doesn't come back."

"A girl there keeps him captive?"

"It seems so."

"Faithful women must not expect to have a perfect time in Sicily," Artois said.

As he spoke he noticed that a change came in his companion's face. It was fleeting, but it was marked. It made Artois think:

"This man understands Sicilian faithlessness in love."

It made him, too, remember sharply some words of his own said long ago in London:

"I love the South, but I distrust what I love, and I see the South in him."

There was a silence between the two men. Heat was growing in the long summer day, heat that lapped them in the influence of the South. Africa had been hotter, but this seemed the breast of the South, full of glory and of languor, and of that strange and subtle influence which inclines the heart of man to passion and the body of man to yield to its desires. It was glorious, this wonderful magic of the South, but was it wholesome for Northern men? Was it not full of danger? As he looked at the great, shining waste of the sea, purple and gold, dark and intense and jewelled, at the outline of Etna, at the barbaric ruin of the Saracenic castle on the cliff opposite, like a cry from the dead ages echoing out of the quivering blue, at the man before him leaning against the blinding white wall above the steep bank of the ravine, Artois said to himself that the South was dangerous to young, full-blooded men, was dangerous, to such a man as Delarey. And he asked himself the question, "What has this man been doing here in this glorious loneliness of the South, while his wife has been saving my life in Africa?" And a sense of reproach, almost of alarm, smote him. For he had called Hermione away. In the terrible solitude that comes near to the soul with the footfalls of death he had not been strong enough to be silent. He had cried out, and his friend had heard and had answered. And Delarey had been left alone with the sun.

"I'm afraid you must feel as if I were your enemy," he said.

And as he spoke he was thinking, "Have I been this man's enemy?"

"Oh no. Why?"

"I deprived you of your wife. You've been all alone here."

"I made friends of the Sicilians."

Maurice spoke lightly, but through his mind ran the thought, "What an enemy this man has been to me, without knowing it!"

"They are easy to get on with," said Artois. "When I was in Sicily I learned to love them."

"Oh, love!" said Maurice, hastily.

He checked himself.

"That's rather a strong word, but I like them. They're a delightful race."

"Have you found out their faults?"

Both men were trying to hide themselves in their words.

"What are their faults, do you think?" Maurice said.

He looked over the wall and saw, far off on the path by the ravine, a black speck moving.

"Treachery when they do not trust; sensuality, violence, if they think themselves wronged."

"Are—are those faults? I understand them. They seem almost to belong to the sun."

Artois had not been looking at Maurice. The sound of Maurice's voice now made him aware that the speaker had turned away from him. He glanced up and saw his companion staring over the wall across the ravine. What was he gazing at? Artois wondered.

"Yes, the sun is perhaps partly responsible for them. Then you have become such a sun-worshipper that——"

"No, no, I don't say that," Maurice interrupted.

He looked round and met Artois's observant eyes. He had dreaded having those eyes fixed upon him.

"But I think—I think things done in such a place, such an island as this, shouldn't be judged too severely, shouldn't be judged, I mean, quite as we might judge them, say, in England."

He looked embarrassed as he ended, and shifted his gaze from his companion.

"I agree with you," Artois said.

Maurice looked at him again, almost eagerly. An odd feeling came to him that this man, who unwittingly had done him a deadly harm, would be able to understand what perhaps no woman could ever understand, the tyranny of the senses in a man, their fierce tyranny in the sunlit lands. Had he been so wicked? Would Artois think so? And the punishment that was perhaps coming—did he deserve that it should be terrible? He wondered, almost like a boy. But Hermione was not with them. When she was there he did not wonder. He felt that he deserved lashes unnumbered.

And Artois—he began to feel almost clairvoyant. The new softness that had come to him with the pain of the body, that had been developed by the blessed rest from pain that was convalescence, had not stricken his faculty of seeing clear in others, but it had changed, at any rate for a time, the sentiments that followed upon the exercise of that faculty. Scorn and contempt were less near to him than they had been. Pity was nearer. He felt now almost sure that Delarey had fallen into some trouble while Hermione was in Africa, that he was oppressed at this moment by some great uneasiness or even fear, that he was secretly cursing some imprudence, and that his last words were a sort of surreptitious plea for forgiveness, thrown out to the Powers of the air, to the Spirits of the void, to whatever shadowy presences are about the guilty man ready to condemn his sin. He felt, too, that he owed much to Delarey. In a sense it might be said that he owed to him his life. For Delarey had allowed Hermione to come to Africa, and if Hermione had not come the end for him, Artois, might well have been death.

"I should like to say something to you, monsieur," he said. "It is rather difficult to say, because I do not wish it to seem formal, when the feeling that prompts it is not formal."

Maurice was again looking over the wall, watching with intensity the black speck that was slowly approaching on the little path.

"What is it, monsieur?" he asked, quickly.

"I owe you a debt—indeed I do. You must not deny it. Through your magnanimous action in permitting your wife to leave you, you, perhaps indirectly, saved my life. For, without her aid, I do not think I could have recovered. Of her nobility and devotion I will not, because I cannot adequately, speak. But I wish to say to you that if ever I can do you a service of any kind I will do it."

As he finished Maurice, who was looking at him now, saw a veil over his big eyes. Could it—could it possibly be a veil of tears!

"Thank you," he answered.

He tried to speak warmly, cordially. But his heart said to him: "You can do nothing for me now. It is all too late!"

Yet the words and the emotion of Artois were some slight relief to him. He was able to feel that in this man he had no secret enemy, but, if need be, a friend.

"You have a nice fellow as servant," Artois said, to change the conversation.

"Gaspare—yes. He's loyal. I intend to ask Hermione to let me take him to England with us."

He paused, then added, with an anxious curiosity:

"Did you talk to him much as you came up?"

He wondered whether the novelist had noticed Gaspare's agitation or whether the boy had been subtle enough to conceal it.

"Not very much. The path is narrow, and I rode in front. He sang most of the time, those melancholy songs of Sicily that came surely long ago across the sea from Africa."

"They nearly always sing on the mountains when they are with the donkeys."

"Dirges of the sun. There is a sadness of the sun as well as a joy."

"Yes."

As Maurice answered, he thought, "How well I know that now!" And as he looked at the black figure drawing nearer in the sunshine it seemed to him that there was a terror in that gold which he had often worshipped. If that figure should be Salvatore! He strained his eyes. At one moment he fancied that he recognized the wild, free, rather strutting walk of the fisherman. At another he believed that his fear had played him a trick, that the movements of the figure were those of an old man, some plodding contadino of the hills. Artois wondered increasingly what he was looking at. A silence fell between them. Artois lay back in the chaise longue and gazed up at the blue, then at the section of distant sea which was visible above the rim of the wall though the intervening mountain land was hidden. It was a paradise up here. And to have it with the great love of a woman, what an experience that must be for any man! It seemed to him strange that such an experience had been the gift of the gods to their messenger, their Mercury. What had it meant to him? What did it mean to him now? Something had changed him. Was it that? In the man by the wall Artois did not see any longer the bright youth he remembered. Yet the youth was still there, the supple grace, the beauty, bronzed now by the long heats of the sun. It was the expression that had changed. In cities one sees anxious-looking men everywhere. In London Delarey had stood out from the crowd not only because of his beauty of the South, but because of his light-hearted expression, the spirit of youth in his eyes. And now here, in this reality that seemed almost like a dream in its perfection, in this reality of the South, there was a look of strain in his eyes and in his whole body. The man had contradicted his surroundings in London—now he contradicted his surroundings here.

While Artois was thinking this Maurice's expression suddenly changed, his attitude became easier. He turned round from the wall, and Artois saw that the keen anxiety had gone out of his eyes. Gaspare was below with his gun pretending to look for birds, and had made a sign that the approaching figure was not that of Salvatore. Maurice's momentary sense of relief was so great that it threw him off his guard.

"What can have been happening beyond the wall?" Artois thought.

He felt as if a drama had been played out there and the denouement had been happy.

Hermione came back at this moment.

"Poor Lucrezia!" she said. "She's plucky, but Sebastiano is making her suffer horribly."

"Here!" said Artois, almost involuntarily.

"It does seem almost impossible, I know."

She sat down again near him and smiled at her husband.

"You are coming back to health, Emile. And Maurice and I—well, we are in our garden. It seems wrong, terribly wrong, that any one should suffer here. But Lucrezia loves like a Sicilian. What violence there is in these people!"

"England must not judge them."

He looked at Maurice.

"What's that?" asked Hermione. "Something you two were talking about when I was in the kitchen?"

Maurice looked uneasy.

"I was only saying that I think the sun—the South has an influence," he said, "and that——"

"An influence!" exclaimed Hermione. "Of course it has! Emile, you would have seen that influence at work if you had been with us on our first day in Sicily. Your tarantella, Maurice!"

She smiled again happily, but her husband did not answer her smile.

"What was that?" said Artois. "You never told me in Africa."

"The boys danced a tarantella here on the terrace to welcome us, and it drove Maurice so mad that he sprang up and danced too. And the strange thing was that he danced as well as any of them. His blood called him, and he obeyed the call."

She looked at Artois to remind him of his words.

"It's good when the blood calls one to the tarantella, isn't it?" she asked him. "I think it's the most wildly innocent expression of extreme joy in the world. And yet"—her expressive face changed, and into her prominent brown eyes there stole a half-whimsical, half-earnest look—"at the end—Maurice, do you know that I was almost frightened that day at the end?"

"Frightened! Why?" he said.

He got up from the terrace-seat and sat down in a straw chair.



"Why?" he repeated, crossing one leg over the other and laying his brown hands on the arms of the chair.

"I had a feeling that you were escaping from me in the tarantella. Wasn't it absurd?"

He looked slightly puzzled. She turned to Artois.

"Can you imagine what I felt, Emile? He danced so well that I seemed to see before me a pure-blooded Sicilian. It almost frightened me!"

She laughed.

"But I soon learned to delight in—in my Sicilian," she said, tenderly.

She felt so happy, so at ease, and she was so completely natural, that it did not occur to her that though she was with her husband and her most intimate friend the two men were really strangers to each other.

"You'll find that I'm quite English, when we are back in London," Maurice said. There was a cold sound of determination in his voice.

"Oh, but I don't want you to lose what you have gained here," Hermione protested, half laughingly, half tenderly.

"Gained!" Maurice said, still in the prosaic voice. "I don't think a Sicilian would be much good in England. We—we don't want romance there. We want cool-headed, practical men who can work, and who've no nonsense about them."

"Maurice!" she said, amazed. "What a cold douche! And from you! Why, what has happened to you while I've been away?"

"Happened to me?" he said, quickly. "Nothing. What should happen to me here?"

"Do you—are you beginning to long for England and English ways?"

"I think it's time I began to do something," he said, resolutely. "I think I've had a long enough holiday."

He was trying to put the past behind him. He was trying to rush into the new life, the life in which there would be no more wildness, no more yielding to the hot impulses that were surely showered down out of the sun. Mentally he was leaving the Enchanted Island already. It was fading away, sinking into its purple sea, sinking out of his sight with his wild heart of youth, while he, cold, calm, resolute man, was facing the steady life befitting an Englishman, the life of work, of social duties, of husband and father, with a money-making ambition and a stake in his country.

"Perhaps you're right," Hermione said.

But there was a sound of disappointment in her voice. Till now Maurice had always shared her Sicilian enthusiasms, had even run before them, lighter-footed than she in the race towards the sunshine. It was difficult to accommodate herself to this abrupt change.

"But don't let us think of going to-day," she added. "Remember—I have only just come back."

"And I!" said Artois. "Be merciful to an invalid, Monsieur Delarey!"

He spoke lightly, but he felt fully conscious now that his suspicion was well founded. Maurice was uneasy, unhappy. He wanted to get away from this peace that held no peace for him. He wanted to put something behind him. To a man like Artois, Maurice was a boy. He might try to be subtle, he might even be subtle—for him. But to this acute and trained observer of the human comedy he could not for long be deceptive.

During his severe illness the mind of Artois had often been clouded, had been dispossessed of its throne by the clamor of the body's pain. And afterwards, when the agony passed and the fever abated, the mind had been lulled, charmed into a stagnant state that was delicious. But now it began to go again to its business. It began to work with the old rapidity that had for a time been lost. And as this power came back and was felt thoroughly, very consciously by this very conscious man, he took alarm. What affected or threatened Delarey must affect, threaten Hermione. Whether he were one with her or not she was one with him. The feeling of Artois towards the woman who had shown him such noble, such unusual friendship was exquisitely delicate and intensely strong. Unmingled with any bodily passion, it was, or so it seemed to him, the more delicate and strong on that account. He was a man who had an instinctive hatred of heroics. His taste revolted from them as it revolted from violence in literature. They seemed to him a coarseness, a crudity of the soul, and almost inevitably linked with secret falseness. But he was conscious that to protect from sorrow or shame the woman who had protected him in his dark hour he would be willing to make any sacrifice. There would be no limit to what he would be ready to do now, in this moment, for Hermione. He knew that, and he took the alarm. Till now he had been feeling curiosity about the change in Delarey. Now he felt the touch of fear.

Something had happened to change Maurice while Hermione had been in Africa. He had heard, perhaps, the call of the blood. All that he had said, and all that he had felt, on the night when he had met Maurice for the first time in London, came back to Artois. He had prophesied, vaguely perhaps. Had his prophecy already been fulfilled? In this great and shining peace of nature Maurice was not at peace. And now all sense of peace deserted Artois. Again, and fiercely now, he felt the danger of the South, and he added to his light words some words that were not light.

"But I am really no longer an invalid," he said. "And I must be getting northward very soon. I need the bracing air, the Spartan touch of the cold that the Sybarite in me dreads. Perhaps we all need them."

"If you go on like this, you two," Hermione exclaimed, "you will make me feel as if it were degraded to wish to live anywhere except at Clapham Junction or the North Pole. Let us be happy as we are, where we are, to-day and—yes, call me weak if you like—and to-morrow!"

Maurice made no answer to this challenge, but Artois covered his silence, and kept the talk going on safe topics till Gaspare came to the terrace to lay the cloth for collazione.

It was past noon now, and the heat was brimming up like a flood over the land. Flies buzzed about the terrace, buzzed against the white walls and ceilings of the cottage, winding their tiny, sultry horns ceaselessly, musicians of the sun. The red geraniums in the stone pots beneath the broken columns drooped their dry heads. The lizards darted and stopped, darted and stopped upon the wall and the white seats where the tiles were burning to the touch. There was no moving figure on the baked mountains, no moving vessel on the shining sea. No smoke came from the snowless lips of Etna. It was as if the fires of the sun had beaten down and slain the fires of the earth.

Gaspare moved to and fro slowly, spreading the cloth, arranging the pots of flowers, the glasses, forks, and knives upon it. In his face there was little vivacity. But now and then his great eyes searched the hot world that lay beneath them, and Artois thought he saw in them the watchfulness, the strained anxiety that had been in Maurice's eyes.

"Some one must be coming," he thought. "Or they must be expecting some one to come, these two."

"Do you ever have visitors here?" he asked, carelessly.

"Visitors! Emile, why are we here? Do you anticipate a knock and 'If you please, ma'am, Mrs. and the Misses Watson'? Good Heavens—visitors on Monte Amato!"

He smiled, but he persisted.

"Never a contadino, or a shepherd, or"—he looked down at the sea—"or a fisherman with his basket of sarde?"

Maurice moved in his chair, and Gaspare, hearing a word he knew, looked hard at the speaker.

"Oh, we sometimes have the people of the hills to see us," said Hermione. "But we don't call them 'visitors.' As to fishermen—here they are!"

She pointed to her husband and Gaspare.

"But they eat all the fish they catch, and we never see the fin of even one at the cottage."

Collazione was ready now. Hermione helped Artois up from his chaise longue, and they went to the table under the awning.

"You must sit facing the view, Emile," Hermione said.

"What a dining-room!" Artois exclaimed.

Now he could see over the wall. His gaze wandered over the mountain-sides, travelled down to the land that lay along the edge of the sea.

"Have you been fishing much since I've been away, Maurice?" Hermione asked, as they began to eat.

"Oh yes. I went several times. What wine do you like, Monsieur Artois?"

He tried to change the conversation, but Hermione, quite innocently, returned to the subject.

"They fish at night, you know, Emile, all along that coast by Isola Bella and on to the point there that looks like an island, where the House of the Sirens is."

A tortured look went across Maurice's face. He had begun to eat, but now he stopped for a moment like a man suddenly paralyzed.

"The House of the Sirens!" said Artois. "Then there are sirens here? I could well believe it. Have you seen them, Monsieur Maurice, at night, when you have been fishing?"