"I only meant----"

"The signora wished to go to Africa. She decided for herself. There is no

reason to call her the poor signora."

"No, signore."

The boy's voice recalled Maurice to prudence.

"It was very good of her to go," he said, more quietly. "Perhaps she has

saved the life of the sick signore by going."

"Si, signore."

Gaspare said no more, but as they rode up, drawing ever nearer to the

bare mountain-side and the house of the priest, Maurice's heart

reiterated the thought of the boy. Why had Hermione ever gone? What a

madness it had all been, her going, his staying! He knew it now for a

madness, a madness of the summer, of the hot, the burning south. In this

terrible quiet of the mountains, without the sun, without the laughter

and the voices and the movement of men, he understood that he had been

mad, that there had been something in him, not all himself, which had run

wild, despising restraint. And he had known that it was running wild, and

he had thought to let it go just so far and no farther. He had set a

limit of time to his wildness and its deeds. And he had set another

limit. Surely he had. He had not ever meant to go too far. And then, just

when he had said to himself "E' finito!" the irrevocable was at hand, the

moment of delirium in which all things that should have been remembered

were forgotten. What had led him? What spirit of evil? Or had he been

led at all? Had not he rather deliberately forced his way to the tragic

goal whither, through all these sunlit days, these starry nights, his

feet had been tending?

He looked upon himself as a man looks upon a stranger whom he has seen

commit a crime which he could never have committed. Mentally he took

himself into custody, he tried, he condemned himself. In this hour of

acute reaction the cool justice of the Englishman judged the passionate

impulse of the Sicilian, even marvelled at it, and the heart of the

dancing Faun cried: "What am I--what am I really?" and did not find the

answer.

"Signorino?"

"Yes, Gaspare."

"When we get to that rock we shall see the house."

"I know."

How eagerly he had looked upward to the little white house on the

mountain on that first day in Sicily, with what joy of anticipation, with

what an exquisite sense of liberty and of peace! The drowsy wail of the

"Pastorale" had come floating down to him over the olive-trees almost

like a melody that stole from paradise. But now he dreaded the turn of

the path. He dreaded to see the terrace wall, the snowy building it

protected. And he felt as if he were drawing near to a terror, and as if

he could not face it, did not know how to face it.




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