the
padrona comforted her a little. Now she had some one to whom she could
tell her trouble, some one who would sympathize.

"I'll go and take a bath, Hermione," Maurice said.

And he, too, disappeared.

Hermione went to talk to Gaspare and tell him what to get in Marechiaro.

When breakfast was ready Maurice came back looking less pale, but still
unboyish. All the bright sparkle to which Hermione was accustomed had
gone out of him. She wondered why. She had expected the change in him to
be a passing thing, but it persisted.

At breakfast it was obviously difficult for him to talk. She sought a
reason for his strangeness. Presently she thought again of Artois. Could
he be the reason? Or was Maurice now merely preoccupied by that great,
new knowledge that there would soon be a third life mingled with theirs?
She wondered exactly what he felt about that. He was really such a boy at
heart despite his set face of to-day. Perhaps he dreaded the idea of
responsibility. His agitation upon the mountain-top had been intense.
Perhaps he was rendered unhappy by the thought of fatherhood. Or was it
Emile?

When breakfast was over, and he was smoking, she said to him:

"Maurice, I want to ask you something."

A startled look came into his eyes.

"What?" he said, quickly.

He threw his cigarette away and turned towards her, with a sort of
tenseness that suggested to her a man bracing himself for some ordeal.

"Only about Emile."

"Oh!" he said.

He took another cigarette, and his attitude at once looked easier. She
wondered why.

"You don't mind about Emile being here, do you?"

Maurice was nearly answering quickly that he was delighted to welcome
him. But a suddenly born shrewdness prevented him. To-day, like a guilty
man, he was painfully conscious, painfully alert. He knew that Hermione
was wondering about him, and realized that her question afforded him an
opportunity to be deceptive and yet to seem quite natural and truthful.
He could not be as he had been, to-day. The effort was far too difficult
for him. Hermione's question showed him a plausible excuse for his
peculiarity of demeanor and conduct. He seized it.

"I think it was very natural for you to bring him," he answered.

He lit the cigarette. His hand was trembling slightly.

"But--but you had rather I hadn't brought him?"

As Maurice began to act a part an old feeling returned to him, and almost
turned his lie into truth.

"You could hardly exp