r tragic gloom, were clouded with moisture. Angrily he fastened
the boat, angrily he laid by the oars. In everything he did there was
violence. He put up his hands to his eyes to rub the moisture that
clouded them away. But it came again. And he swore under his breath. He
looked once more towards the Casa del Mare. The figure of his Padrona
had disappeared, but he remembered just how it had gone up the
steps--leaning forward, moving very slowly. It had made him think of an
early morning long ago, when he and his Padrona had followed a coffin
down the narrow street of Marechiaro, and over the mountain-path to
the Campo Santo above the Ionian Sea. He shook his head, murmuring to
himself. He was not swearing now. He shook his head again and again.
Then he went away, and sat down under the shadow of the cliff, and let
his hands drop down between his knees.

The look he had seen in his Padrona's eyes had made him feel terrible.
His violent, faithful heart was tormented. He did not analyze--he only
knew, he only felt. And he suffered horribly. How had his Padrona been
able to look at him like that?

The moisture came thickly to his eyes now, and he no longer attempted to
rub it away. He no longer thought of it.

Never had he imagined that his Padrona could look at him like that.
Strong man though he was, he felt as a child might who is suddenly
abandoned by its mother. He began to think now. He thought over all he
had done to be faithful to his dead Padrone and to be faithful to the
Padrona. During many, many years he had done all he could to be faithful
to these two, the dead and the living. And at the end of this long
service he received as a reward this glance of hatred.

Tears rolled down his sunburnt cheeks.

The injustice of it was like a barbed and poisoned arrow in his heart.
He was not able to understand what his Padrona was feeling, how, by what
emotional pilgrimage, she had reached that look of hatred which she had
cast upon him. If she had not returned, if she had done some deed of
violence in the house of Maddalena, he could perhaps have comprehended
it. But that she should come back, that she should smile, make him sit
facing her, talk about Maddalena as she had talked, and then--then look
at him like that!

His _amour-propre_, his long fidelity, his deep affection--all were
outraged.

Vere came down the steps and found him there.

"Gaspare!"

He got up instantly when he heard her voice, rubbed his ey