again at the letter, and reread that part in which Hermione wrote
of her duties as sick-nurse.

"I have to see to everything, and be always there to put on the poultices
and the ice."

He read those words again and again, and once more he was conscious of a
stirring of anger, of revolt, such as he had felt on the night after
Hermione's departure when he was alone on the terrace. She was his wife,
his woman. What right had she to be tending another man? His imagination
began to work quickly now, and he frowned as he looked up at the blue. He
forgot all the rest of Hermione's letter, all her love of him and her
longing to be back in Sicily with him, and thought only of her friendship
for Artois, of her ministrations to Artois. And something within him
sickened at the thought of the intimacy between patient and nurse, raged
against it, till he felt revengeful. The wild unreasonableness of his
feeling did not occur to him now. He hated that his wife should be
performing these offices for Artois; he hated that she had chosen to go
to him, that she had considered it to be her duty to go.

Had it been only a sense of duty that had called her to Africa?

When he asked himself this question he could not hesitate what answer to
give. Even this new jealousy, this jealousy of the Sicilian within him,
could not trick him into the belief that Hermione had wanted to leave
him.

Yet his feeling of bitterness, of being wronged, persisted and grew.

When, after a very long time, Gaspare came to show him a letter written
in large, round hand, he was still hot with the sense of injury. And a
new question was beginning to torment him. What must Artois think?

"Aren't you going to write, signorino?" asked Gaspare, when Maurice had
read his letter and approved it.

"I?" he said.

He saw an expression of surprise on Gaspare's face.

"Yes, of course. I'll write now. Help me up. I feel so lazy!"

Gaspare seized his hands and pulled, laughing. Maurice stood up and
stretched.

"You are more lazy than I, signore," said Gaspare. "Shall I write for
you, too?"

"No, no."

He spoke abstractedly.

"Don't you know what to say?"

Maurice looked at him swiftly. The boy had divined the truth. In his
present mood it would be difficult for him to write to Hermione. Still,
he must do it. He went up to the cottage and sat down at the
writing-table with Hermione's letter beside him.

He read it again carefully, then began to write. Now he