cloth on Tito, and put something in the pannier. Al mare! Al
mare!"

The boy's warning rang in deaf ears. For Maurice really meant what he
said. He was reckless, perhaps, but he was going to wrong no one, neither
Salvatore, nor Hermione, nor Maddalena. The coming of Artois drove him
into the arms of pleasure, but it would never drive him into the arms of
sin. For it was surely no sin to make a little love in this land of the
sun, to touch a girl's hand, to snatch a kiss sometimes from the soft
lips of a girl, from whom he would never ask anything more, whatever
leaping desire might prompt him.

And Salvatore was always at hand. He seldom put to sea in these days
unless Maurice went with him in the boat. His greedy eyes shone with a
light of satisfaction when he saw Tito coming along the dusty white road
from Isola Bella, and at night, when he crossed himself superstitiously
before Maria Addolorata, he murmured a prayer that more strangers might
be wafted to his "Paese," many strangers with money in their pockets and
folly in their hearts. Then let the sea be empty of fish and the wind of
the storm break up his boat--it would not matter. He would still live
well. He might even at the last have money in the bank at Marechiaro,
houses in the village, a larger wine-shop than Oreste in the Corso.

But he kept his small eyes wide open and seldom let Maddalena be long
alone with the forestiere, and this supervision began to irritate
Maurice, to make him at last feel hostile to Salvatore. He remembered
Gaspare's words about the fisherman--"To him you are as nothing. But he
likes your money"--and a longing to trick this fox of the sea, who wanted
to take all and make no return, came to him.

"Why can one never be free in this world?" he thought, almost angrily.
"Why must there always be some one on the watch to see what one is doing,
to interfere with one's pleasure?"

He began presently almost to hate Salvatore, who evidently thought that
Maurice was ready to wrong him, and who, nevertheless, grasped greedily
at every soldo that came from the stranger's pocket, and touted
perpetually for more.

His attitude was hideous. Maurice pretended not to notice it, and was
careful to keep on the most friendly possible terms with him. But, while
they acted their parts, the secret sense of enmity grew steadily in the
two men, as things grow in the sun. When Maurice saw the fisherman, with
a smiling, bird's face, coming to meet him a