ch the boat must come, a strange and
terrible feeling came to her, a feeling that she knew she ought to drive
out of her soul, but that she was powerless to expel.

She felt as if at this moment God were on His trial before her--before a
poor woman who loved.

"If God has taken Maurice from me," she thought, "He is cruel,
frightfully cruel, and I cannot love Him. If He has not taken Maurice
from me, He is the God who is love, the God I can, I must worship!"

Which God was he?

The vast scheme of the world narrowed; the wide horizons vanished. There
was nothing beyond the limit of her heart. She felt, as almost all
believing human beings feel in such moments, that God's attention was
entirely concentrated upon her life, that no other claimed His care,
begged for His pity, demanded His tenderness because hers was so intense.

Did God wish to lose her love? Surely not! Then He could not commit this
frightful act which she feared. He had not committed it.

A sort of relief crept through her as she thought this. Her agony of
apprehension was suddenly lessened, was almost driven out.

God wants to be loved by the beings He has created. Then He would not
deliberately, arbitrarily destroy a love already existing in the heart of
one of them--a love thankful to Him, enthusiastically grateful for
happiness bestowed by Him.

Beyond the darkness of the point there came out of the dimness of the
night that brooded above the open sea a moving darkness, and Hermione
heard the splash of oars in the calm water. She got up quickly. Now her
body was trembling again. She stared at the boat as if she would force it
to yield its secret to her eyes. But that was only for an instant. Then
her ears seemed to be seeking the truth, seeking it from the sound of the
oars in the water!

There was no rhythmic regularity in the music they made, no steadiness,
no--no--

She listened passionately, instinctively bending down her head sideways.
It seemed to her that she was listening to a drunken man rowing. Now
there was a quick beating of the oars in the water, then silence, then a
heavy splash as if one of the oars had escaped from an uncertain hand,
then some uneven strokes, one oar striking the water after the other.

"But Gaspare is a contadino," she said to herself, "not a fisherman.
Gaspare is a contadino and--"

"Gaspare!" she called out. "Gaspare!"

The boat stopped midway in the mouth of the inlet.

"Gaspare! Is it you?"

She