y from the glass feeling almost afraid of
herself.

At breakfast she and Vere always met. The table was laid out-of-doors
in the little garden or on the terrace if the weather was fine, in the
dining-room if it was bad. This morning Hermione saw the glimmer of
the white cloth near the fig-tree. She wondered if Vere was there,
and longed to plead a headache and to have her coffee in her bedroom.
Nevertheless, she went down resolved to govern herself.

In the garden she found Giulia smiling and putting down the silver
coffee-pot in quite a bower of roses. Vere was not visible.

Hermione exchanged a good-morning with Giulia and sat down. The
servant's smiling face brought her a mingled feeling of relief and
wonder. The pungent smell of coffee, conquering the soft scent of the
many roses, pinned her mind abruptly down to the simple realities and
animal pleasures and necessities of life. She made a strong effort to
be quite normal, to think of the moment, to live for it. The morning was
fresh and lively; the warmth of the sun, the tonic vivacity of the air
from the sea, caressed and quickened her blood.

The minute garden was secluded. A world that seemed at peace, a world
of rocks and waters far from the roar of traffic, the uneasy hum of men,
lay around her.

Surely the moment was sweet, was peaceful. She would live in it.

Vere came slowly from the house, and at once Hermione's newly made and
not yet carried out resolution crumbled into dust. She forgot the
sun, the sea, the peaceful situation and all material things. She
was confronted by the painful drama of the island life! Vere with her
secrets, Emile with his, Gaspare fighting to keep her, his Padrona,
still in mystery. And she was confronted by her own passions, those
hosts of armed men that have their dwelling in every powerful nature.

Vere came up listlessly.

"Good-morning, Madre," she said.

She kissed her mother's cheek with cold lips.

"What lovely roses!"

She smelled them and sat down in her place facing the sea-wall.

"Yes, aren't they?"

"And such a heavenly morning after the mist! What are we going to do
to-day?"

Hermione gave her her coffee, and the little dry tap of a spoon on an
egg-shell was heard in the stillness of the garden.

"Well, I--I am going across to take the tram."

"Are you?"

"Yes."

"Naples again? I'm tired of Naples."

There was in her voice a sound that suggested rather hatred than
lassitude.

"I don't kno