ut roses above his ears!" he repeated. "That day he was a real
Siciliano!"

"Gaspare--Gaspare--hush! Don't! Don't!"

She held his hand and went on speaking softly.

"We must be quiet in here. We must remember to be quiet. It isn't our
fault, Gaspare. We did all we could to make him happy. We ought to be
glad of that. You did everything you could, and he loved you for it. He
was happy with us. I think he was. I think he was happy till the very
end. And that is something to be glad of. Don't you think he was very
happy here?"

"Si, signora!" the boy whispered, with twitching lips.

"I'm glad I came back in time," Hermione said, looking at the dark hair
on the pillow. "It might have happened before, while I was away. I'm glad
we had one more day together."

Suddenly, as she said that, something in the mere sound of the words
seemed to reveal more clearly to her heart what had befallen her, and for
the first time she began to cry and to remember. She remembered all
Maurice's tenderness for her, all his little acts of kindness. They
seemed to pass rapidly in procession through her mind on their way to her
heart. Not one surely was absent. How kind to her he had always been! And
he could never be kind to her again. And she could never be kind to
him--never again.

Her tears went on falling quietly. She did not sob like Gaspare. But she
felt that now she had begun to cry she would never be able to stop again;
that she would go on crying till she, too, died.

Gaspare looked up at her.

"Signora!" he said. "Signora!"

Suddenly he got up, as if to go out of the room, out of the house. The
sight of his padrona's tears had driven him nearly mad with the desire to
wreak vengeance upon Salvatore. For a moment his body seemed to get
beyond his control. His eyes saw blood, and his hand darted down to his
belt, and caught at the knife that was there, and drew it out. When
Hermione saw the knife she thought the boy was going to kill himself
with it. She sprang up, went swiftly to Gaspare, and put her hand on it
over his hand.

"Gaspare, what are you doing?" she said.

For a moment his face was horrible in its savagery. He opened his mouth,
still keeping his grasp on the knife, which she tried to wrest from him.

"Lasci andare! Lasci andare!" he said, beginning to struggle with her.

"No, Gaspare."

"Allora--"

He paused with his mouth open.

At that moment he was on the very verge of a revelation of the truth. He
w