rength there was in her
arose, protesting. She called herself harsh names: egoist, craven,
_faineant_. But it was no use to attack herself. In the deeps of her
poor, eager, passionate, hungry woman's nature something wept, and
needed, and could not be comforted, and could not be schooled. It
complained as one feeble, but really it must be strong; for it was
pitilessly persistent in its grieving. It had a strange endurance. Life,
the passing of the years, could not change it, could not still it. Those
eternal hungers of which Hermione had spoken to Artois--they must have
their meaning. Somewhere, surely, there are the happy hunting-grounds,
dreamed of by the red man--there are the Elysian Fields where the souls
that have longed and suffered will find the ultimate peace.

There came a tap at the door.

Hermione started up from the cushion against which she had pressed
her head, and opened her eyes, instinctively laying her hand on Vere's
volume of Rossetti, and pretending to read it.

"Avanti!" she said.

The door opened and Gaspare appeared. Hermione felt an immediate
sensation of comfort.

"Gaspare," she said, "what is it? I thought you were in bed."

"Ha bisogna Lei?" he said.

It was a most familiar phrase to Hermione. It had been often on
Gaspare's lips when he was a boy in Sicily, and she had always loved it,
feeling as if it sprang from a nature pleasantly ready to do anything
in her service. But to-night it had an almost startling appropriateness,
breaking in as if in direct response to her gnawing hunger of the heart.
As she looked at Gaspare, standing by the door in his dark-blue clothes,
with an earnest expression on his strong, handsome face, she felt as
if he must have come just then because he was conscious that she had so
much need of help and consolation. And she could not answer "no" to his
simple question.

"Come in, Gaspare," she said, "and shut the door. I'm all alone. I
should like to have a little talk with you."

He obeyed her, shut the door gently, and came up to her with the
comfortable confidence of one safe in his welcome, desired not merely as
a servant but as a friend by his Padrona.

"Did you want to say anything particular, Gaspare?" Hermione asked him.
"Here--take a cigarette."

She gave him one. He took it gently, twitching his nose as he did so.
This was a little trick he had when he was pleased.

"You can smoke it here, if you like."

"Grazie, Signora."

He lit it grav