we shall
part friends, if only for Teresa's sake.' Well, he was surprised. He
smiled that dark smile of his, which may mean gratitude or murder. He
looked at Teresa. She sprung up from her seat, and let her peaches fall
from her lap on the deck. She put her little hands on mine--the tears
were in her pretty blue eyes. 'You are a good man,' she said. 'Some
woman must love you very much!' Yes--she said that. And she was right.
Our Lady be praised for it!"

And his dark eyes glanced upward with a devout gesture of thanksgiving.
I looked at him with a sort of jealous hunger gnawing at my heart. Here
was another self deluded fool--a fond wretch feasting on the
unsubstantial food of a pleasant dream--a poor dupe who believed in the
truth of woman!

"You are a happy man," I said with a forced smile; "you have a guiding
star for your life as well as for your boat--a woman that loves you and
is faithful? is it so?"

He answered me directly and simply, raising his cap slightly as he did
so.

"Yes, signor--my mother."

I was deeply touched by his naive and unexpected reply--more deeply
than I cared to show. A bitter regret stirred in my soul--why, oh, why
had my mother died so young! Why had I never known the sacred joy that
seemed to vibrate through the frame, and sparkle in the eyes of this
common sailor! Why must I be forever alone, with a curse of a woman's
lie on my life, weighing me down to the dust and ashes of a desolate
despair! Something in my face must have spoken my thoughts, for the
captain said, gently:

"The signor has no mother?"

"She died when I was but a child," I answered, briefly.

The Sicilian puffed lightly at his cigarette in silence--the silence of
an evident compassion. To relieve him of his friendly embarrassment, I
said:

"You spoke of Teresa? Who is Teresa?"

"Ah, you may well ask, signor! No one knows who she is; she loves
Carmelo Neri, and there all is said. Such a little thing she is--so
delicate! like a foam-bell on the waves; and Carmelo--You have seen
Carmelo, signor?"

I shook my head in the negative.

"Ebbene! Carmelo is big and rough and black like a wolf of the forests,
all hair and fangs; Teresa is, well! you have seen a little cloud in
the sky at night, wandering past the moon all flecked with pale
gold?--that is Teresa. She is, small and slight as a child; she has
rippling curls, and soft praying eyes, and tiny, weak, white hands, not
strong enough to snap a twig in two.