cilian heart. As
he looked, swift and short as was his glance, his amazement died away.
Narcissus saw himself in the stream. Maurice saw, or believed he saw, his
heart's image, trembling perhaps and indistinct, far down in the passion
of Gaspare. So could he have been with a padrone had fate made his
situation in life a different one. So could he have felt had something
been concealed from him.

Maurice said nothing in reply. Maddalena was there. They walked in
silence to the cottage door, and there, rather like a detected
school-boy, he bade her good-bye, and set out through the trees with
Gaspare.

"That's not the way, is it?" Maurice said, presently, as the boy turned
to the left.

"How did you come, signore?"

"I!"

He hesitated. Then he saw the uselessness of striving to keep up a
master's pose with this servant of the sea and of the hills.

"I came by water," he said, smiling. "I swam, Gasparino."

The boy answered the smile, and suddenly the tension between them was
broken, and they were at their ease again.

"I will show you another way, signore, if you are not afraid."

Maurice laughed out gayly.

"The way of the rocks?" he said.

"Si, signore. But you must go barefooted and be as nimble as a goat."

"Do you doubt me, Gasparino?"

He looked at the boy hard, with a deliberately quizzing kindness, that
was gay but asked forgiveness, too, and surely promised amendment.

"I have never doubted my padrone."

They said nothing more till they were at the wall of rock. Then Gaspare
seemed struck by hesitation.

"Perhaps--" he began. "You are not accustomed to the rocks, signore,
and--"

"Silenzio!" cried Maurice, bending down and pulling off his boots and
stockings.

"Do like this, signore!"

Gaspare slung his boots and stockings round his neck. Maurice imitated
him.

"And now give me your hand--so--without pulling."

"But you hadn't--"

"Give me your hand, signore!"

It was an order. Maurice obeyed it, feeling that in these matters Gaspare
had the right to command.

"Walk as I do, signore, and keep step with me."

"Bene!"

"And look before you. Don't look down at the sea."

"Va bene."

A moment, and they were across. Maurice blew out his breath.

"By Jove!" he said, in English.

He sat down on the grass, put his hand on his knees, and looked back at
the rock and at the precipices.

"I'm glad I can do that!" he said.

Something within him was revelling, was dancing a tarante