re! Gaspare!"

Maurice had him by the arms.

"Why did you?" panted the boy. "Why did you?"

"Then Salvatore knows?"

Maurice saw that any denial was useless.

"He knows! He knows!"

If Maurice had not held Gaspare tightly the boy would have flung himself
down headlong on the ground, to burst into one of those storms of weeping
which swept upon him when he was fiercely wrought up. But Maurice would
not let him have this relief.

"Gaspare! Listen to me! What is he going to do? What is Salvatore going
to do?"

"Santa Madonna! Santa Madonna!"

The boy rocked himself to and fro. He began to invoke the Madonna and the
saints. He was beside himself, was almost like one mad.

"Gaspare--in the name of God----!"

"H'sh!"

Suddenly the boy kept still. His face changed, hardened. His body became
tense. With his hand still held up in a warning gesture, he crept to the
edge of the barn and looked round it.

"What is it?" Maurice whispered.

Gaspare stole back.

"It is only Lucrezia. She is spreading the linen. I thought----"

"What is Salvatore going to do?"

"Unless you go down to the sea to meet him this evening, signorino, he
is coming up here to-night to tell everything to the signora."

Maurice went white.

"I shall go," he said. "I shall go down to the sea."

"Madonna! Madonna!"

"He won't come now? He won't come this morning?"

Maurice spoke almost breathlessly, with his hands on the boy's hands
which streamed with sweat. Gaspare shook his head.

"I told him if he came up I would meet him in the path and kill him."

The boy had out a knife.

Maurice put his arm round Gaspare's shoulder. At that moment he really
loved the boy.

"Will he come?"

"Only if you do not go."

"I shall go."

"I will come with you, signorino."

"No. I must go alone."

"I will come with you!"

A dogged obstinacy hardened his whole face, made even his shining eyes
look cold, like stones.

"Gaspare, you are to stay with the signora. I may miss Salvatore going
down. While I am gone he may come up here. The signora is not to speak
with him. He is not to come to her."

Gaspare hesitated. He was torn in two by his dual affection, his dual
sense of the watchful fidelity he owed to his padrone and to his padrona.

"Va bene," he said, at last, in a half whisper.

He hung down his head like one exhausted.

"How will it finish?" he murmured, as if to himself. "How will it
finish?"

"I must go," Maurice said. "I