it did not really matter much.

"Corbario is an assassin," he said. "Remember that, Nino. As for his
poor lady, she is a little lacking, or she would never have married him.
But she is a saint, and what do saints want with cleverness? They go to
paradise. Does that need much sense? We should all go if we could. Why
do you cock your head on one side and look at me like a Christian? Are
you trying to make me think you have a soul? You are made of nothing but
corn meal and water, and a little wool, poor beast! But you have more
sense than the Signora, and you are not an assassin, like her husband."

At this, Nino threw himself upon his back with his four legs in the air
and squirmed with sheer delight, showing his jagged teeth and the roof
of a very terrible mouth, and emitting a series of wolfish snorts; after
which he suddenly rolled over upon his feet again, shook himself till
his shaggy coat bristled all over his body, walked sedately to the open
door of the hut, and sat down to look at the weather.

"He is almost a Christian," Ercole remarked under his breath, as if he
were afraid the dog might hear the compliment and grow too vain.

For Ercole was a reticent man, and though he told Nino what he thought
about people, he never told any one else. Marcello was the only person
to whom he ever showed any inclination to attach himself. He regarded
even the Contessa with suspicion, perhaps merely because she was a
woman; and as for Aurora, girls did not count at all in his cosmogony.

"God made all the other animals before making women," he observed
contemptuously one day, when he had gone out alone with Marcello.

"I like them," laughed the boy.

"So did Adam," retorted Ercole, "and you see what came of it."

No answer to this argument occurred to Marcello just then, so he said
nothing; and he thought of Aurora, and his mother, and the sad-eyed
Contessa, and wondered vaguely whether they were very unlike other
women, as Ercole implied.

"When you know women," the man vouchsafed to add presently, "you will
wish you were dead. The Lord sent them into the world for an affliction
and for the punishment of our sins."

"You were never married, were you?" asked Marcello, still smiling.

Ercole stopped short in the sand, amongst the sea-thistles that grew
there, and Nino trotted up and looked at him, to be ready if anything
happened. Marcello knew the man's queer ways, and waited for him to
speak.

"Married?" he snorte