master's bedside.

"Where is she? Don't let her be drowned! Don't let the octopi get her!
Vincenzo! Vincenzo!" he cried, and the good fellow tried to reassure
him.

"_Sia benedetto_, signorino! They shall not have her. I will cut them
in pieces with my knife."

"What is the matter? I am quite well. Is it only the tyre? There is
Orvieto, and the sun just risen. Is it still raining?"

"No, signorino. The sun shines and it has not rained for days. It will
soon be May."

Very slowly the tide of feverish dreams ebbed, and Jean became aware
of the iris pattern on the curtains of the bed; of the ray of sunlight
that danced every morning on the ceiling and passed away; of the old
woman who gave him his medicine. She was kind, and he liked to see her
sitting sewing by lamplight, and to watch her distorted shadow
looming gigantic in an angle of the wall. Hilaire was there too, but
sometimes he was called away, and then Jean would hear his uneven step
going to and fro across an uncarpeted floor, and the sound of hushed
voices in the next room.

"Hilaire, is--is it all right?"

"Yes, do not be afraid. Get well," the elder man answered, but Jean
still lay with his face turned to the wall. He was afraid. The longing
to see Olive, to hold her once more in his arms, burned within him. He
moved restlessly and laid his clenched hands together on the
half-healed wound in his side.

One night he slept soundly, dreamlessly, as a child sleeps, and woke
at dawn. He raised himself on his elbow in the bed and looked about
him, and Vincenzo came to him at once and asked him what he wanted.

"Go out," he said, "and leave me alone for a while."

The green painted window-shutter was unfastened, and it swung open in
the little wind that had sprung up. Jean saw the morning star shining,
and the widening rift of pale gold in the grey sky above the hills. He
heard the stirring of awakened life. Birds fluttered in the laurels. A
boy was singing as he went to his work among the vines by the lake
side:

"_Ho da dirti tante cose._"

It seemed to Jean that he too had many things to say to the woman he
loved. He called to her faintly, in a weak, hoarse voice: "Olive!"

After a while he heard her answering him from the next room.

"Jean! Oh, Jean!"

He lay still, smiling.

EDINBURGH
COLSTON AND CO. LIMITED
PRINTERS

THE BLUE LAGOON

By =H. DE VERE STACPOOLE=,

Author of "The Crimson Azaleas,"