y with the ropes. They passed quite close beneath her. She saw Vere's
bright and eager face looking the way they were going, anticipating the
voyage; Gaspare's brown hands moving swiftly and deftly. She saw the
sail run up, the boat bend over. The oars were laid in their places now.
The boat went faster through the water. The forms in it dwindled.
Was that Vere's head, or Gaspare's? Who was that standing up? The
fisher-boy? What were they now, they and the boat that held them? Only a
white sail on the blue, going towards the sun.

And how deep was the silence that fell about the house, how deep and
hollow! She saw her life then like a cavern that was empty. No waters
flowed into it. No lights played in its recesses. No sounds echoed
through it.

She looked up into the blue, and remembered her thought, that Maurice
had been taken by the blue. Hark! Was there not in the air the thin
sound of a reed flute playing a tarantella? She shut her eyes, and saw
the gray rocks of Sicily. But the blue was too vast. Maurice was lost in
it, lost to her forever. And she gazed up into it again, with the effort
to travel through it, to go on and on and on. And it seemed as if her
soul ached from that journey.

The sail had dipped down below the horizon. She let fall the blind. She
sat down in the silence.

Vere was greatly perplexed about her mother. One day in the boat she
followed her instinct and spoke to Gaspare about her. Hermione and she
between them had taught Gaspare some English. He understood it fairly
well, and could speak it, though not correctly, and he was very proud of
his knowledge. Because of the fisher-boy, Vere said what she had to say
slowly in English. Gaspare listened with the grave look of learning that
betokened his secret sensation of being glorified by his capacities.
But when he grasped the exact meaning of his Padroncina's words, his
expression changed. He shook his head vigorously.

"Not true!" he said. "Not true! No matter--there is no matter with my
Padrona."

"But Gaspare--"

Vere protested, explained, strong in her conviction of the change in her
mother.

But Gaspare would not have it. With energetic gestures he affirmed that
his Padrona was just as usual. But Vere surprised a look in his eyes
which told her he was watching her to see if he had deceived her. Then
she realized that for some reason of his own Gaspare did not wish her to
know that he had seen the change, wished also to detach her o