ed Maurice, who was looking at him now, saw a veil over his
big eyes. Could it--could it possibly be a veil of tears!

"Thank you," he answered.

He tried to speak warmly, cordially. But his heart said to him: "You can
do nothing for me now. It is all too late!"

Yet the words and the emotion of Artois were some slight relief to him.
He was able to feel that in this man he had no secret enemy, but, if
need be, a friend.

"You have a nice fellow as servant," Artois said, to change the
conversation.

"Gaspare--yes. He's loyal. I intend to ask Hermione to let me take him to
England with us."

He paused, then added, with an anxious curiosity:

"Did you talk to him much as you came up?"

He wondered whether the novelist had noticed Gaspare's agitation or
whether the boy had been subtle enough to conceal it.

"Not very much. The path is narrow, and I rode in front. He sang most of
the time, those melancholy songs of Sicily that came surely long ago
across the sea from Africa."

"They nearly always sing on the mountains when they are with the
donkeys."

"Dirges of the sun. There is a sadness of the sun as well as a joy."

"Yes."

As Maurice answered, he thought, "How well I know that now!" And as he
looked at the black figure drawing nearer in the sunshine it seemed to
him that there was a terror in that gold which he had often worshipped.
If that figure should be Salvatore! He strained his eyes. At one moment
he fancied that he recognized the wild, free, rather strutting walk of
the fisherman. At another he believed that his fear had played him a
trick, that the movements of the figure were those of an old man, some
plodding contadino of the hills. Artois wondered increasingly what he was
looking at. A silence fell between them. Artois lay back in the chaise
longue and gazed up at the blue, then at the section of distant sea which
was visible above the rim of the wall though the intervening mountain
land was hidden. It was a paradise up here. And to have it with the great
love of a woman, what an experience that must be for any man! It seemed
to him strange that such an experience had been the gift of the gods to
their messenger, their Mercury. What had it meant to him? What did it
mean to him now? Something had changed him. Was it that? In the man by
the wall Artois did not see any longer the bright youth he remembered.
Yet the youth was still there, the supple grace, the beauty, bronzed now
by the long heat