"But, signora, how can you--"

"There, Antonino has disappeared under the trees! We shall see him in a minute among the rocks. I'll go to meet him."

And she went quickly to the archway, and looked down the path where the lizards were darting to and fro in the sunshine. Almost directly Antonino reappeared, a small boy climbing steadily up the steep pathway, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder.

"Antonino!" she called to him. "Is it a telegram?"

"Si, signora!" he cried out.

He came up to her, panting, opened the bag, and gave her the folded paper.

"Go and get something to drink," she said. "To eat, too, if you're hungry."

Antonino ran off eagerly, while Hermione tore open the paper and read these words in French:

"Monsieur Artois dangerously ill; fear may not recover; he wished you to know.

MAX BERTON, Docteur Medecin, Kairouan."

Hermione dropped the telegram. She did not feel at all surprised. Indeed, she felt that she had been expecting almost these very words, telling her of a tragedy at which the letter she still held in her hand had hinted.

For a moment she stood there without being conscious of any special sensation. Then she stooped, picked up the telegram, and read it again.

This time it seemed like an answer to that unuttered prayer in her heart: "Give me an opportunity to show my grat.i.tude." She did not hesitate for a moment as to what she would do. She would go to Kairouan, to close the eyes of her friend if he must die, if not to nurse him back to life.

Antonino was munching some bread and cheese and had one hand round a gla.s.s full of red wine.

"I'm going to write an answer," she said to him, "and you must run with it."

"Si, signora."

"Was it from Africa, signora?" asked Lucrezia.

"Yes."

Lucrezia's jaw fell, and she stared in superst.i.tious amazement.

"I wonder," Hermione thought, "if Maurice--"

She went gently to the bedroom. He was still sleeping calmly. His att.i.tude of luxurious repose, the sound of his quiet breathing, seemed strange to her eyes and ears at this moment, strange and almost horrible.

For an instant she thought of waking him in order to tell him her news and consult with him about the journey. It never occurred to her to ask him whether there should be a journey. But something held her back, as one is held back from disturbing the slumber of a tired child, and she returned to the sitting-room, wrote out the following telegram:

"Shall start for Kairouan at once; wire me Tunisia Palace Hotel, Tunis, MADAME DELAREY."

and sent Antonino with it flying down the hill. Then she got time-tables and a guide-book of Tunisia, and sat down at her writing-table to make out the journey; while Lucrezia, conscious that something unusual was afoot, watched her with solemn eyes.

Hermione found that she would gain nothing by starting that night. By leaving early the next morning she would arrive at Trapani in time to catch a steamer which left at midnight for Tunis, reaching Africa at nine on the following morning. From Tunis a day's journey by train would bring her to Kairouan. If the steamer were punctual she might be able to catch a train immediately on her arrival at Tunis. If not, she would have to spend one day there.

Already she felt as if she were travelling. All sense of peace had left her. She seemed to hear the shriek of engines, the roar of trains in tunnels and under bridges, to shake with the oscillation of the carriage, to sway with the dip and rise of the action of the steamer.

Swiftly, as one in haste, she wrote down times of departure and arrival: Cattaro to Messina, Messina to Palermo, Palermo to Trapani, Trapani to Tunis, Tunis to Kairouan, with the price of the ticket--a return ticket.

When that was done and she had laid down her pen, she began for the first time to realize the change a morsel of paper had made in her life, to realize the fact of the closeness of her new knowledge of what was and what was coming to Maurice's ignorance. The travelling sensation within her, an intense interior restlessness, made her long for action, for some ardent occupation in which the body could take part. She would have liked to begin at once to pack, but all her things were in the bedroom where Maurice was sleeping. Would he sleep forever? She longed for him to wake, but she would not wake him. Everything could be packed in an hour. There was no reason to begin now. But how could she remain just sitting there in the great tranquillity of this afternoon of spring, looking at the long, calm line of Etna rising from the sea, while Emile, perhaps, lay dying?

She got up, went once more to the terrace, and began to pace up and down under the awning. She had not told Lucrezia that she was going on the morrow. Maurice must know first. What would he say? How would he take it?

And what would he do? Even in the midst of her now growing sorrow--for at first she had hardly felt sorry, had hardly felt anything but that intense restlessness which still possessed her--she was preoccupied with that. She meant, when he woke, to give him the telegram, and say simply that she must go at once to Artois. That was all. She would not ask, hint at anything else. She would just tell Maurice that she could not leave her dearest friend to die alone in an African city, tended only by an Arab, and a doctor who came to earn his fee.

And Maurice--what would he say? What would he--do?

If only he would wake! There was something terrible to her in the contrast between his condition and hers at this moment.

And what ought she to do if Maurice--?

She broke off short in her mental arrangement of possible happenings when Maurice should wake.

The afternoon waned and still he slept. As she watched the light changing on the sea, growing softer, more wistful, and the long outline of Etna becoming darker against the sky, Hermione felt a sort of unreasonable despair taking possession of her. So few hours of the day were left now, and on the morrow this Sicilian life--a life that had been ideal--must come to an end for a time, and perhaps forever. The abruptness of the blow which had fallen had wakened in her sensitive heart a painful, almost an exaggerated sense of the uncertainty of the human fate. It seemed to her that the joy which had been hers in these tranquil Sicilian days, a joy more perfect than any she had conceived of, was being broken off short, as if it could never be renewed. With her anxiety for her friend mingled another anxiety, more formless, but black and horrible in its vagueness.

"If this should be our last day together in Sicily!" she thought, as she watched the light softening among the hills and the shadows of the olive-trees lengthening upon the ground.

"If this should be our last night together in the house of the priest!"

It seemed to her that even with Maurice in another place she could never know again such perfect peace and joy, and her heart ached at the thought of leaving it.

"To-morrow!" she thought. "Only a few hours and this will all be over!"

It seemed almost incredible. She felt that she could not realize it thoroughly and yet that she realized it too much, as in a nightmare one seems to feel both less and more than in any tragedy of a wakeful hour.

A few hours and it would all be over--and through those hours Maurice slept.

The twilight was falling when he stirred, muttered some broken words, and opened his eyes. He heard no sound, and thought it was early morning.

"Hermione!" he said, softly.

Then he lay still for a moment and remembered.

"By Jove! it must be long past time for dejeuner!" he thought.

He sprang up and put his head into the sitting-room.

"Hermione!" he called.

"Yes," she answered, from the terrace.

"What's the time?"

"Nearly dinner-time."

He burst out laughing.

"Didn't you think I was going to sleep forever?" he said.

"Almost," her voice said.