's fingers warm
and soft as rose-petals against his neck, her cheek on his, Vanno could
have laughed with contemptuous pity at the wretched image of himself
which he seemed to see down below, stupidly hurrying along with an
offering for the Casino. He was not so much shocked at his own yielding
to the attraction as he was surprised that there could have been so
strong an attraction.

"Doesn't it look stupid down there?" Mary asked, almost in a whisper.
"Like a lot of toy houses for children to play with?"

"And the children are tired of playing with them!" Vanno answered. "The
toys there were only worth playing with when there was nothing better to
do."

"That's it!" she echoed. "When there was nothing better to do. I think
that was what the cure must have meant."

"The cure!" Vanno echoed. "I'd forgotten him!"

"So had I. How ungrateful of us. But you have made me forget everything
except--_you_."

She rose slowly, reluctantly, and then pretended to exert her strength
in lifting him up from his knees. "The cure stayed away on purpose," she
said.

"Yes. For he meant this to happen--just as it has."

Mary smiled, half closing her eyes, so that the world swam before her in
a radiant mist. She was less afraid of love and the man who gave and
took it, now. Already it seemed that Vanno and she had always been
lovers, not sad, parted lovers, but happy playmates in a world made for
them. There could not have been a time when they did not understand
each other. Everything before this day had been a dream. "Do you know,"
she said, "why I came here--I mean, why the cure asked me? He told me
that I must come and 'save' you. As if I could! It was I who needed
saving."

[Illustration: "'IT WAS FATE BROUGHT YOU--TO GIVE YOU TO ME. DO YOU
REGRET IT?'"]

"He knew," Vanno answered, speaking more to himself than to her, "that
we should save each other."

As he spoke, a foot ostentatiously rattled the gravel of the path, at a
safe distance. The cure coughed, and coughed again. A serious catching
in the throat he seemed to have, for a man who lived in the fresh air
and laughed at the notion of a "sunset chill."

Vanno took Mary's hand and kept it in his as he led her out of the
arbour.

"This is what your blessing has done, Father," he said.

Then, the cure must have blessed him, too!

The priest smiled his good smile as he came toward them, the sky flaming
behind his black-clad figure, like banners waving.

"I thoug