Marietta stared at him, blinking.

"I have no wish to recover the object I have lost," he continued blandly. "The loss of it is a new, thrilling, humanising experience.

It will make a man of me--and, let us hope, a better man. Besides, in a sense, I lost it long ago--'when first my smitten eyes beat full on her,' one evening at the Francais, three, four years ago. But it's essential to my happiness that I should see the person into whose possession it has fallen. That is why I am not angry with you for being a witch. It suits my convenience. Please arrange with the powers of darkness to the end that I may meet the person in question tomorrow at the latest. No!" He raised a forbidding hand. "I will listen to no protestations. And, for the rest, you may count upon my absolute discretion.

'She is the darling of my heart And she lives in our valley,'"

he carolled softly.

"E del mio cuore la carina, E dimor' nella nostra vallettina,"

he obligingly translated. "But for all the good I get of her, she might as well live on the top of the Corn.o.bastone," he added dismally. "Yes, now you may bring me my coffee--only, let it be tea. When your coffee is coffee it keeps me awake at night."

Marietta trudged back to her kitchen, nodding at the sky.

The next afternoon, however, the d.u.c.h.essa di Santangiolo appeared on the opposite bank of the tumultuous Aco.

IX

Peter happened to be engaged in the amiable pastime of tossing bread-crumbs to his goldfinches.

But a score or so of sparrows, vulture-like, lurked under cover of the neighbouring foliage, to dash in viciously, at the critical moment, and s.n.a.t.c.h the food from the finches' very mouths.

The d.u.c.h.essa watched this little drama for a minute, smiling, in silent meditation: while Peter--who, for a wonder, had his back turned to the park of Ventirose, and, for a greater wonder still perhaps, felt no p.r.i.c.king in his thumbs--remained unconscious of her presence.

At last, sorrowfully, (but there was always a smile at the back of her eyes), she shook her head.

"Oh, the pirates, the daredevils," she sighed.

Peter started; faced about; saluted.

"The brigands," said she, with a glance towards the sparrows' outposts.

"Yes, poor things," said he.

"Poor things?" cried she, indignant. "The unprincipled little monsters!"

"They can't help it," he pleaded for them. "'It is their nature to.'

They were born so. They had no choice."

"You actually defend them!" she marvelled, rebukefully.

"Oh, dear, no," he disclaimed. "I don't defend them. I defend nothing.

I merely recognise and accept. Sparrows--finches. It's the way of the world--the established division of the world."

She frowned incomprehension.

"The established division of the world--?"

"Exactly," said he. "Sparrows--finches the s.n.a.t.c.hers and the s.n.a.t.c.hed-from. Everything that breathes is either a sparrow or a finch.

'T is the universal war--the struggle for existence--the survival of the most unscrupulous. 'T is a miniature presentment of what's going on everywhere in earth and sky."

She shook her head again.

"YOU see the earth and sky through black spectacles, I 'm afraid,"

she remarked, with a long face. But there was still an underglow of amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes.

"No," he answered, "because there's a compensation. As you rise in the scale of moral development, it is true, you pa.s.s from the category of the s.n.a.t.c.hers to the category of the s.n.a.t.c.hed-from, and your ultimate extinction is a.s.sured. But, on the other hand, you gain talents and sensibilities. You do not live by bread alone. These goldfinches, for a case in point, can sing--and they have your sympathy. The sparrows can only make a horrid noise--and you contemn them. That is the compensation. The s.n.a.t.c.hers can never know the joy of singing--or of being pitied by ladies."

"N... o, perhaps not," she consented doubtfully. The underglow of amus.e.m.e.nt in her eyes shone nearer to the surface. "But--but they can never know, either, the despair of the singer when his songs won't come."

"Or when the ladies are pitiless. That is true," consented Peter.

"And meanwhile they get the bread, crumbs," she said.

"They certainly get the bread-crumbs," he admitted.

"I 'm afraid "--she smiled, as one who has conducted a syllogism safely to its conclusion--"I 'm afraid I do not think your compensation compensates."

"To be quite honest, I daresay it does n't," he confessed.

"And anyhow"--she followed her victory up--"I should not wish my garden to represent the universal war. I should not wish my garden to be a battle-field. I should wish it to be a retreat from the battle--an abode of peace--a happy valley--a sanctuary for the s.n.a.t.c.hed-from."

"But why distress one's soul with wishes that are vain?" asked he. "What could one do?"

"One could keep a dragon," she answered promptly. "If I were you, I should keep a sparrow-devouring, finch-respecting dragon."

"It would do no good," said he. "You'd get rid of one species of s.n.a.t.c.her, but some other species of s.n.a.t.c.her would instantly pop UP."

She gazed at him with those amused eyes of hers, and still again, slowly, sorrowfully, shook her head.

"Oh, your spectacles are black--black," she murmured.

"I hope not," said he; "but such as they are, they show me the inevitable conditions of our planet. The s.n.a.t.c.her, here below, is ubiquitous and eternal--as ubiquitous, as eternal, as the force of gravitation. He is likewise protean. Banish him--he takes half a minute to change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an ap.r.o.ned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always--if you don't mind the vernacular--'on the s.n.a.t.c.h.'"

The d.u.c.h.essa arched her eyebrows.

"If things are really at such a sorry pa.s.s," she said, "I will commend my former proposal to you with increased confidence. You should keep a dragon. After all, you only wish to protect your garden; and that"--she embraced it with her glance--"is not so very big. You could teach your dragon, if you procured one of an intelligent breed, to devour greengrocers, trusted friends, and even moneylenders too (tough though no doubt they are), as well as sparrows."

"Your proposal is a surrender to my contention," said Peter. "You would set a s.n.a.t.c.her to catch the s.n.a.t.c.hers. Other heights in other lives, perhaps. But in the dark backward and abysm of s.p.a.ce to which our lives are confined, the s.n.a.t.c.her is indigenous and inexpugnable."

The d.u.c.h.essa looked at the sunny landscape, the bright lawns, the high bending trees, with the light caught in the network of their million leaves; she looked at the laughing white villas westward, the pale-green vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she looked at the rushing river, with the diamonds sparkling on its surface, at the far-away gleaming snows of Monte Sfiorito, at the scintillant blue shy overhead.

Then she looked at Peter, a fine admixture of mirth with something like gravity in her smile.