man. "You will want some one to row you
back."

"No, Giovanni. I can get Gaspare to put me ashore. You had better be
off."

"Va bene, Signore," he replied, looking disappointed.

The Signora of the Casa del Mare was always very hospitable to such
fishermen as she knew. Giovanni wanted to seek out Gaspare, to have a
cigarette. But he obediently jumped into the boat and rowed off into the
darkness, while Artois went up the steps towards the house.

A cold feeling of dread encompassed him. He still saw, imaginatively,
that stranger at the window, that falling movement, that frantic
gesture, the descending blind that brought to Hermione's bedroom a great
obscurity. And he remembered Hermione's face in the garden, half seen by
him once in shadows, with surely a strange and terrible smile upon it--a
smile that had made him wonder if he had ever really known her.

He came out on the plateau before the front door. The door was shut,
but as he went to open it it was opened from within, and Gaspare stood
before him in the twilight, with the dark passage for background.

Gaspare looked at Artois in silence.

"Gaspare," Artois said, "I came home from San Martino. I found a note
from the Signorina, begging me to come here at once."

"Lo so, Signore."

"I have come. What has--what is it? Where is the Signorina?"

Gaspare stood in the middle of the narrow doorway.

"The Signorina is in the garden."

"Waiting for me?"

"Si, Signore."

"Very well."

He moved to enter the house; but Gaspare stood still where he was.

"Signore," he said.

Artois stopped at the door-sill.

"What is it?"

"What are you going to do here?"

At last Gaspare was frankly the watch-dog guarding the sacred house.
His Padrona had cast upon him a look of hatred. Yet he was guarding the
sacred house and her within it. Deep in the blood of him was the sense
that, even hating him, she belonged to him and he to her.

And his Padroncina had trusted him, had clung to him that day.

"What are you going to do here?"

"If there is trouble here, I want to help."

"How can you help, Signore?"

"First tell me,--there is great trouble?"

"Si, Signore."

"And you know what it is? You know what caused it?"

"No one has told me."

"But you know what it is."

"Si, Signore."

"Does--the Signorina doesn't know?"

"No, Signore."

He paused, then added:

"The Signorina is not to know what it is."

"You do not think I shall tell her?"

"