"E' veramente un paradiso!" concluded Gaspare.

"A paradise!" echoed Maurice. "A paradise! I say, Gaspare, why can't we

always live in paradise? Why can't life be one long festa?"

"Non lo so, signore. And the signora? Do you think she will be here for

the fair?"

"I don't know. But if she is here, I am not sure that she will come to

see it."

"Why not, signorino? Will she stay with the sick signore?"

"Perhaps. But I don't think she will be here. She does not say she will

be here."

"Do you want her to be here, signorino?" Gaspare asked, abruptly.

"Why do you ask such a question? Of course I am happy, very happy, when

the signora is here."

As he said the words Maurice remembered how happy he had been in the

house of the priest alone with Hermione. Indeed, he had thought that he

was perfectly happy, that he had nothing left to wish for. But that

seemed long ago. He wondered if he could ever again feel that sense of

perfect contentment. He could scarcely believe so. A certain feverishness

had stolen into his Sicilian life. He felt often like a man in suspense,

uncertain of the future, almost apprehensive. He no longer danced the

tarantella with the careless abandon of a boy. And yet he sometimes had a

strange consciousness that he was near to something that might bring to

him a joy such as he had never yet experienced.

"I wish I knew what day Hermione is arriving," he thought, almost

fretfully. "I wish she wouldn't keep me hung up in this condition of

uncertainty. She seems to think that I have nothing to do but just wait

here upon the pleasure of Artois."

With that last thought the old sense of injury rose in him again. This

friend of Hermione's was spoiling everything, was being put before every

one. It was really monstrous that even during their honeymoon this old

friendship should intrude, should be allowed to govern their actions and

disturb their serenity. Now that Artois was out of danger Maurice began

to forget how ill he had been, began sometimes to doubt whether he had

ever been so ill as Hermione supposed. Perhaps Artois was one of those

men who liked to have a clever woman at his beck and call. These literary

fellows were often terribly exigent, eaten up with the sense of their own

importance. But he, Maurice, was not going to allow himself to be made a

cat's-paw of. He would make Artois understand that he was not going to

permit his life to be interfered with by any one.




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