cruel,
who was secretly ready to be cruel. And, anticipating the unpleasant
probable, he threw himself with the greater violence into the enjoyment
of his few more days of complete liberty.

He wrote to Hermione, expressing as naturally as he could his ready
acquiescence in her project, and then gave himself up to the
light-heartedness that came with the flying moments of these last days of
emancipation in the sun. His mood was akin to the mood of the rich man,
"Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." The music, he knew, must
presently fail. The tarantella must come to an end. Well, then he would
dance with his whole soul. He would not husband his breath nor save his
strength. He would be thoughtless because for a moment he had thought too
much, too much for his nature of the dancing faun who had been given for
a brief space of time his rightful heritage.

Each day now he went down to the sea.

"How hot it is!" he would say to Gaspare. "If I don't have a bath I shall
be suffocated."

"Si, signore. At what time shall we go?"

"After the siesta. It will be glorious in the sea to-day."

"Si, signore, it is good to be in the sea."

The boy smiled, at last would sometimes laugh. He loved his padrona, but
he was a male and a Sicilian. And the signora had gone across the sea to
her friend. These visits to the sea seemed to him very natural. He would
have done the same as his padrone in similar circumstances with a light
heart, with no sense of doing wrong. Only sometimes he raised a warning
voice.

"Signorino," he would say, "do not forget what I have told you."

"What, Gaspare?"

"Salvatore is birbante. You think he likes you."

"Why shouldn't he like me?"

"You are a forestiere. To him you are as nothing. But he likes your
money."

"Well, then? I don't care whether he likes me or not. What does it
matter?"

"Be careful, signorino. The Sicilian has a long hand. Every one knows
that. Even the Napoletano knows that. I have a friend who was a soldier
at Naples, and--"

"Come, now, Gaspare! What reason will there ever be for Salvatore to turn
against me?"

"Va bene, signorino, va bene! But Salvatore is a bad man when he thinks
any one has tried to do him a wrong. He has blood in his eyes then, and
when we Sicilians see through blood we do not care what we do--no, not if
all the world is looking at us."

"I shall do no wrong to Salvatore. What do you mean?"

"Niente, signorino, niente!"

"Stick the