of June dancing in a great tarantella.

As Maurice saw the wonder of sea and sky, the boat coming in over the
sea, with Maddalena in the stern holding a bouquet of flowers, his heart
leaped up and he forgot for a moment the shadow in himself, the shadow of
his own unworthiness. He sprang off the donkey.

"I'll go down to meet them!" he cried. "Catch hold of Tito, Gaspare!"

The railway line ran along the sea, between road and beach. He had to
cross it. In doing so one of his feet struck the metal rail, which gave
out a dry sound. He looked down, suddenly recalled to a reality other
than the splendor of the morning, the rapture of this careless festa day.
And again he was conscious of the shadow. Along this line, in a few
hours, would come the train bearing Hermione and Artois. Hermione would
be at the window, eagerly looking out, full of happy anticipation,
leaning to catch the first sight of his face, to receive and return his
smile of welcome. What would her face be like when--? But Salvatore was
hailing him from the sea. Maddalena was waving her hand. The thing was
done. The die was cast. He had chosen his lot. Fiercely he put away from
him the thought of Hermione, lifted his voice in an answering hail, his
hand in a salutation which he tried to make carelessly joyous. The boat
glided in between the flat rocks. And then--then he was able to forget.
For Maddalena's long eyes were looking into his, with the joyousness of a
child's, and yet with something of the expectation of a woman's, too. And
her brown face was alive with a new and delicious self-consciousness,
asking him to praise her for the surprise she had prepared, in his honor
surely, specially for him, and not for her comrades and the public of the
fair.

"Maddalena!" he exclaimed.

He put out his hands to help her out. She stood on the gunwale of the
boat and jumped lightly down, with a little laugh, onto the beach.

"Maddalena! Per Dio! Ma che bellezza!"

She laughed again, and stood there on the stones before him smiling and
watching him, with her head a little on one side, and the hand that held
the tight bouquet of roses and ferns, round as a ring and red as dawn, up
to her lips, as if a sudden impulse prompted her now to conceal something
of her pleasure.

"Le piace?"

It came to him softly over the roses.

Maurice said nothing, but took her hand and looked at her. Salvatore was
fastening up the boat and putting the oars into their places, an