almost as if to herself.

For the first time a little cloud went over Vere's sensitive face.

"Madre, how horribly I must have disappointed you," she said.

The mother did not break into protestations. She always treated her
child with sincerity.

"Just for a moment, Vere," she answered. "And then, very soon, you made
me feel how much more intimate can be the relationship between a mother
and a daughter than between a mother and any son."

"Is that true, really?"

"I think it is."

"But why should that be?"

"Don't you think that Monsieur Emile can tell you much better than I? I
feel all the things, you know, that he can explain."

There was a touch of something that was like a half-hidden irony in her
voice.

"Monsieur Emile! Yes, I think he understands almost everything about
people," said Vere, quite without irony. "But could a man explain such a
thing as well as a woman? I don't think so."

"We have the instincts, perhaps, men the vocabulary. Come, Vere, I want
to look over into the Saint's Pool and see what those men are doing."

Vere laughed.

"Take care, Madre, or Gaspare will be jealous."

A soft look came into Hermione's face.

"Gaspare and I know each other," she said, quietly.

"But he could be jealous--horribly jealous."

"Of you, perhaps, Vere, but never of me. Gaspare and I have passed
through too much together for anything of that kind. Nobody could ever
take his place with me, and he knows it quite well."

"Gaspare's a darling, and I love him," said Vere, rather inconsequently.
"Shall we look over into the Pool from the pavilion, or go down by the
steps?"

"We'll look over."

They passed in through a gateway to the narrow terrace that fronted the
Casa del Mare facing Vesuvius, entered the house, traversed a little
hall, came out again into the air by a door on its farther side, and
made their way to a small pavilion that looked upon the Pool of San
Francesco. Almost immediately below, in the cool shadow of the cliff,
the boat was moored. The two men, lying at full length in it, their
faces buried in their hands, were already asleep. But the boy, sitting
astride on the prow, with his bare feet dangling on each side of it
to the clear green water, was munching slowly, and rather seriously, a
hunch of yellow bread, from which he cut from time to time large pieces
with a clasp knife. As he ate, lifting the pieces of bread to his mouth
with the knife, against whose blade he held them