the fireworks were over."

"It was the crowd. I thought it best to go to the stable without
searching for you. I knew you and Salvatore would be there."

The boy was silent for a moment. Then he said:

"Salvatore was very angry when he saw me come into the stable without
you."

"Why?"

"He said I ought not to have left my padrone."

"And what did you say?"

"I told him I would not be spoken to by him. If you had not come in just
then I think there would have been a baruffa. Salvatore is a bad man, and
always ready with his knife. And he had been drinking."

"He was quiet enough coming home."

"I do not like his being so quiet."

"What does it matter?"

Again there was a pause. Then Gaspare said:

"Now that the signora has come back we shall not go any more to the Casa
delle Sirene, shall we?"

"No, I don't suppose we shall go any more."

"It is better like that, signorino. It is much better that we do not go."

Maurice said nothing.

"We have been there too often," added Gaspare. "I am glad the signora has
come back. I am sorry she ever went away."

"It was not our fault that she went," Maurice said, in a hard voice like
that of a man trying to justify something, to defend himself against some
accusation. "We did not want the signora to go."

"No, signore."

Gaspare's voice sounded almost apologetic. He was a little startled by
his padrone's tone.

"It was a pity she went," he continued. "The poor signora----"

"Why is it such a pity?" Maurice interrupted, almost roughly, almost
suspiciously. "Why do you say 'the poor signora'?"

Gaspare stared at him with open surprise.

"I only meant----"

"The signora wished to go to Africa. She decided for herself. There is no
reason to call her the poor signora."

"No, signore."

The boy's voice recalled Maurice to prudence.

"It was very good of her to go," he said, more quietly. "Perhaps she has
saved the life of the sick signore by going."

"Si, signore."

Gaspare said no more, but as they rode up, drawing ever nearer to the
bare mountain-side and the house of the priest, Maurice's heart
reiterated the thought of the boy. Why had Hermione ever gone? What a
madness it had all been, her going, his staying! He knew it now for a
madness, a madness of the summer, of the hot, the burning south. In this
terrible quiet of the mountains, without the sun, without the laughter
and the voices and the movement of men, he understood that he had been
ma