A heavy, obstinate look came into the boy's face, transforming it. The question startled him, and he had not understood a word of the conversation which had led up to it. What had they been talking about? He glanced furtively at his master. Maurice did not look at him.

"Salvatore and Maddalena, signora," he answered, after a pause.

Then he took the dish and went into the house.

"What's the matter with Gaspare?" said Hermione. "I never saw him look like that before--quite ugly. Doesn't he like these people?"

"Oh yes," replied Maurice. "Why--why, they're quite friends of ours. We saw them at the fair only yesterday."

"Well, then, why should Gaspare look like that?"

"Oh," said Artois, who saw the discomfort of his host, "perhaps there is some family feud that you know nothing of. When I was in Sicily I found the people singularly subtle. They can gossip terribly, but they can keep a secret when they choose. If I had won the real friendship of a Sicilian, I would rather trust him with my secret than a man of any other race. They are not only loyal--that is not enough--but they are also very intelligent."

"Yes, they are both--the good ones," said Hermione. "I would trust Gaspare through thick and thin. If they were only as stanch in love as they can be in friendship!"

Gaspare came out again with another course. The ugly expression had gone from his face, but he still looked unusually grave.

"Ah, when the senses are roused they are changed beings," Artois said.

"They hate and resent governance from outside, but their blood governs them."

"Our blood governs us when the time comes--do you remember?"

Hermione had said the words before she remembered the circ.u.mstances in which they had been spoken and of whom they were said. Directly she had uttered them she remembered.

"What was that?" Maurice asked, before Artois could reply.

He had seen a suddenly conscious look in Hermione's face, and instantly he was aware of a feeling of jealousy within him.

"What was that?" he repeated, looking quickly from one to the other.

"Something I remember saying to your wife," Artois answered. "We were talking about human nature--a small subject, monsieur, isn't it?--and I think I expressed the view of a fatalist. At any rate, I did say that--that our blood governs us when the time comes."

"The time?" Maurice asked.

His feeling of jealousy died away, and was replaced by a keen personal interest unmingled with suspicions of another.

"Well, I confess it sometimes seems to me as if, when a certain hour strikes, a certain deed must be committed by a certain man or woman. It is perhaps their hour of madness. They may repent it to the day of their death. But can they in that hour avoid that deed? Sometimes, when I witness the tragic scenes that occur abruptly, unexpectedly, in the comedy of life, I am moved to wonder."

"Then you should be very forgiving, Emile," Hermione said.

"And you?" he asked. "Are you, or would you be, forgiving?"

Maurice leaned forward on the table and looked at his wife with intensity.

"I hope so, but I don't think it would be for that--I mean because I thought the deed might not have been avoided. I think I should forgive because I pitied so, because I know how desperately unhappy I should be myself if I were to do a hateful thing, a thing that was exceptional, that was not natural to my nature as I had generally known it. When one really does love cleanliness, to have thrown one's self down deliberately in the mud, to see, to feel, that one is soiled from head to foot--that must be terrible. I think I should forgive because I pitied so. What do you say, Maurice?"

It was like a return to their talk in London at Caminiti's restaurant, when Hermione and Artois discussed topics that interested them, and Maurice listened until Hermione appealed to him for his opinion. But now he was more deeply interested than his companions.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't know about pitying and forgiving, but I expect you're right, Hermione."

"How?"

"In what you say about--about the person who's done the wrong thing feeling awful afterwards. And I think Monsieur Artois is right, too--about the hour of madness. I'm sure he is right. Sometimes an hour comes and one seems to forget everything in it. One seems not to be really one's self in it, but somebody else, and--and--"

Suddenly he seemed to become aware that, whereas Hermione and Artois had been considering a subject impersonally, he was introducing the personal element into the conversation. He stopped short, looked quickly from Hermione to Artois, and said:

"What I mean is that I imagine it's so, and that I've known fellows--in London, you know--who've done such odd things that I can only explain it like that. They must have--well, they must have gone practically mad for the moment. You--you see what I mean, Hermione?"

The question was uneasy.

"Yes, but I think we can control ourselves. If we couldn't, remorse would lose half its meaning. I could never feel remorse because I had been mad--horror, perhaps, but not remorse. It seems to me that remorse is our sorrow for our own weakness, the heart's cry of 'I need not have done the hateful thing, and I did it, I chose to do it!' But I could pity, I could pity, and forgive because of my pity."

Gaspare came out with coffee.

"And then, Emile, you must have a siesta," said Hermione. "This is a tiring day for you. Maurice and I will leave you quite alone in the sitting-room."

"I don't think I could sleep," said Artois.

He was feeling oddly excited, and attributed the sensation to his weak state of health. For so long he had been shut up, isolated from the world, that even this coming out was an event. He was accustomed to examine his feelings calmly, critically, to track them to their sources.

He tried to do so now.

"I must beware of my own extra sensitiveness," he said to himself. "I'm still weak. I am not normal. I may see things distorted. I may exaggerate, turn the small into the great. At least half of what I think and feel to-day may come from my peculiar state."

Thus he tried to raise up barriers against his feeling that Delarey had got into some terrible trouble during the absence of Hermione, that he was now stricken with remorse, and that he was also in active dread of something, perhaps of some Nemesis.

"All this may be imagination," Artois thought, as he sipped his coffee.

But he said again:

"I don't think I could sleep. I feel abnormally alive to-day. Do you know the sensation, as if one were too quick, as if all the nerves were standing at attention?"

"Then our peace here does not soothe you?" Hermione said.

"If I must be truthful--no," he answered.

He met Maurice's restless glance.

"I think I've had enough coffee," he added. "Coffee stimulates the nerves too much at certain times."

Maurice finished his and asked for another cup.

"He isn't afraid of being overstimulated," said Hermione. "But, Emile, you ought to sleep. You'll be dead tired this evening when you ride down."

"This evening," Hermione had said. Maurice wondered suddenly how late Artois was going to stay at the cottage.

"Oh no, it will be cool," Artois said.

"Yes," Maurice said. "Towards five we get a little wind from the sea nearly always, even sooner sometimes. I--I usually go down to bathe about that time."