't know. Oh, I am absurd, probably. One has such strange ideas,
houses based on sand, or on air, or perhaps on nothing at all."

She got up, went to her writing-table, opened a drawer, and took out of
it a letter.

"Emile," she said, coming back to him with it in her hand, "would you
like to explain this to me?"

"What is it?"

"The letter I found from you when I came back from Capri."

"But does it need explanation?"

"It seemed to me as if it did. Read it and see."

He took it from her, opened it and read it.

"Well?" he said.

"Isn't the real meaning between the lines?"

"If it is, cannot you decipher it?"

"I don't know. I don't think so. Somehow it depressed me. Perhaps it was
my mood just then. Was it?"

"Perhaps it was merely mine."

"But why--'I feel specially this summer I should like to be near you'?
What does that mean exactly?"

"I did feel that."

"Why?"

"I don't think I can tell you now. I am not sure that I could even have
told you at the time I wrote that letter."

She took it from him and put it away again in the drawer.

"Perhaps we shall both know later on," she said, quietly. "I believe we
shall."

He did not say anything.

"I saw that boy, Ruffo, this afternoon," she said, after a moment of
silence.

"Did you?" said Artois, with a change of tone, a greater animation. "I
forgot to ask Vere about him. I suppose he has been to the island again
while I have been away?"

"Not once. Poor boy, I find he has been ill. He has had fever. He was
out to-day for the first time after it. We met him close to Mergellina.
He was in a boat, but he looked very thin and pulled down. He seemed so
delighted to see me. I was quite touched."

"Hasn't Vere been wondering very much why he did not come again?"

"She has never once mentioned him. Vere is a strange child sometimes."

"But you--haven't you spoken of him to her?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Vere's silence made you silent?"

"I suppose so. I must tell her. She likes the boy very much."

"What is it that attracts her to this boy, do you think?"

The question was ordinary enough, but there was a peculiar intonation
in Artois' voice as he asked it, an intonation that awakened surprise in
Hermione.

"I don't know. He is an attractive boy."

"You think so too?"

"Why, yes. What do you mean, Emile?"

"I was only wondering. The sea breeds a great many boys like Ruffo, you
know. But they don't all get Khali Targa cigarettes g