and hens, and even cages containing
yellow birds that came from islands far away and that sang with the
sweetness of the angels. The ristoranti were crowded with people, playing
cards and eating delicious food, and outside upon the pavements were
dozens of little tables at which you could sit, drinking syrups of
beautiful hues and watching at your ease the marvels of the show. Here
came boys from Naples to sing and dance, peddlers with shining knives and
elegant walking-sticks for sale, fortune-tellers with your fate already
printed and neatly folded in an envelope, sometimes a pigeon-man with a
high black hat, who made his doves hop from shoulder to shoulder along a
row of school-children, or a man with a monkey that played antics to the
sound of a grinding organ, and that was dressed up in a red worsted
jacket and a pair of cloth trousers. And there were shooting-galleries
and puppet-shows and dancing-rooms, and at night, when the darkness came,
there were giuochi di fuoco which lit up the whole sky, till you could
see Etna quite plainly.

"E' veramente un paradiso!" concluded Gaspare.

"A paradise!" echoed Maurice. "A paradise! I say, Gaspare, why can't we
always live in paradise? Why can't life be one long festa?"

"Non lo so, signore. And the signora? Do you think she will be here for
the fair?"

"I don't know. But if she is here, I am not sure that she will come to
see it."

"Why not, signorino? Will she stay with the sick signore?"

"Perhaps. But I don't think she will be here. She does not say she will
be here."

"Do you want her to be here, signorino?" Gaspare asked, abruptly.

"Why do you ask such a question? Of course I am happy, very happy, when
the signora is here."

As he said the words Maurice remembered how happy he had been in the
house of the priest alone with Hermione. Indeed, he had thought that he
was perfectly happy, that he had nothing left to wish for. But that
seemed long ago. He wondered if he could ever again feel that sense of
perfect contentment. He could scarcely believe so. A certain feverishness
had stolen into his Sicilian life. He felt often like a man in suspense,
uncertain of the future, almost apprehensive. He no longer danced the
tarantella with the careless abandon of a boy. And yet he sometimes had a
strange consciousness that he was near to something that might bring to
him a joy such as he had never yet experienced.

"I wish I knew what day Hermione is arriving," he