" reiterated Gaspare. "You
want to live here because you have always been in London, and I want to
live in London because I have always been here. Ecco!"

Maurice tried to laugh.

"Perhaps that is it. We wish for what we can't have. Dio mio!"

He threw out his arms.

"But, anyhow, I've not done with Sicily yet! Come on, Gaspare! Now for
the rocks! Ciao! Ciao! Ciao! Morettina bella ciao!"

He burst out into a song, but his voice hardly rang true, and Gaspare
looked at him again with a keen inquiry.

* * * * *

Artois was not yet destined to die. He said that Hermione would not let
him die, that with her by his side it was useless for Death to approach
him, to desire him, to claim him. Perhaps her courage gave to him the
will to struggle against his enemy. The French doctor, deeply, almost
sentimentally interested in the ardent woman who spoke his language with
perfection and carried out such instructions of his as she considered
sensible, with delicate care and strong thoroughness, thought and said
so.

"But for madame," he said to Artois, "you would have died, monsieur. And
why? Because till she came you had not the will to live. And it is the
will to live that assists the doctor."

"I cannot be so ungallant as to die now," Artois replied, with a feeble
but not sad smile. "Were I to do so, madame would think me ungrateful.
No, I shall live. I feel now that I am going to live."

And, in fact, from the night of Maurice's visit with Gaspare to the house
of the sirens he began to get better. The inflammation abated, the
temperature fell till it was normal, the agony died away gradually from
the tormented body, and slowly, very slowly, the strength that had ebbed
began to return. One day, when the doctor said that there was no more
danger of any relapse, Artois called Hermione and told her that now she
must think no more of him, but of herself; that she must pack up her
trunk and go back to her husband.

"You have saved me, and I have killed your honeymoon," he said, rather
sadly. "That will always be a regret in my life. But, now go, my dear
friend, and try to assuage your husband's wrath against me. How he must
hate me!"

"Why, Emile?"

"Are you really a woman? Yes, I know that. No man could have tended me as
you have. Yet, being a woman, how can you ask that question?"

"Maurice understands. He is blessedly understanding."

"Don't try his blessed comprehension of you and o