upon
the bread of tears.

Did Gaspare know? If the truth were what Artois suspected, and Gaspare
did know it, what would Gaspare do?

That was a problem which interested Artois intensely.

The Sicilian often said of a thing "E il Destino." Yet Artois believed
that for his beloved Padrona he would fight to the death. He, Artois,
would leave this fight against destiny to the Sicilian. For him the
Oriental's philosophy; for him resignation to the inevitable, whatever
it might be.

He said to himself that to do more than he had already done to ward off
the assaults of truth would be impious. Perhaps he ought never to have
done anything. Perhaps it would have been far better to have let the
wave sweep over Hermione long ago. Perhaps even in that fight of his
there had been secret selfishness, the desire that she should not
know how by his cry from Africa her happy life had been destroyed. And
perhaps he was to be punished some day for that.

He did not know. But he felt, after all these years, that if to that
hermitage of the sea Fate had really found the way he must let things
take their course. And it seemed to him as if the old Oriental had been
mysteriously appointed to come near him just at that moment, to make him
feel that this was so. The Oriental had been like a messenger sent to
him out of that East which he loved, which he had studied, but from
which, perhaps, he had not learned enough.

Vere's letter came. He read it with eagerness and pleasure till he came
to the postscript. But that startled him. He knew that Vere had never
read his books. He thought her far too young to read them. Till lately
he had almost a contempt for those who write with one eye on "la jeune
fille." Now he could conceive writing with a new pleasure something that
Vere might read. But those books of his! Why had Hermione suddenly given
that permission? He remembered Peppina. Vere must have told her mother
of the scene with Peppina, and how her eyes had been opened to certain
truths of life, how she had passed from girlhood to womanhood through
that gate of knowledge. And Hermione must have thought that it was
useless to strive to keep Vere back.

But did he wish Vere to read all that he had written?

On Thursday he went over to the island with mingled eagerness and
reluctance. That little home in the sea, washed by blue waters, rooted
by blue skies, sun-kissed and star-kissed by day and night, drew and
repelled him. There was the