"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.