cushions, facing the great and radiant view. After he had spoken he
sighed.

"I don't think," he said, "that either of you really know that this is
Eden. That knowledge has been reserved for the interloper, for me."

Hermione sat down close to him. Maurice was standing by the wall,
listening furtively to the noises from the out-house, where Gaspare was
unsaddling the donkeys. Artois glanced at him, and was more sharply
conscious of change in him. To Artois this place, after the long journey,
which had sorely tried his feeble body, seemed an enchanted place of
peace, a veritable Elysian Field in which the saddest, the most driven
man must surely forget his pain and learn how to rest and to be joyful in
repose. But he felt that his host, the man who had been living in
paradise, who ought surely to have been learning its blessed lessons
through sunlit days and starry nights, was restless like a man in a city,
was anxious, was intensely ill at ease. Once, watching this man, Artois
had thought of the messenger, poised on winged feet, radiantly ready for
movement that would be exquisite because it would be obedient. This man
still looked ready for flight, but for a flight how different! As Artois
was thinking this Maurice moved.

"Excuse me just for an instant!" he said. "I want to speak to Gaspare."

He saw now that Gaspare was taking into the cottage the provisions that
had been carried up by the donkey from Marechiaro.

"I--I told him to do something for me in the village," he added, "and I
want just to know--"

He looked at them, almost defiantly, as if he challenged them not to
believe what he had said. Then, without finishing his sentence, he went
quickly into the cottage.

"You have chosen your garden well," Artois said to Hermione directly they
were alone. "No other sea has ever given to me such an impression of
tenderness and magical space as this; no other sea has surely ever had a
horizon-line so distant from those who look as this."

He went on talking about the beauty, leading her with him. He feared lest
she might begin to speak about her husband.

Meanwhile, Maurice had reached the mountain-side behind the house and was
waiting there for Gaspare. He heard the boy's voice in the kitchen
speaking to Lucrezia, angrily it seemed by the sound. Then the voice
ceased and Gaspare appeared for an instant at the kitchen door, making
violent motions with his arms towards the mountain. He disappeared. What
did he