lemnly, making his liquid brown eyes look
more enormous than usual.

"It is all destiny," Hermione repeated, almost dreamily.

Just then she felt that it was so--that each human being, and she most
of all, was in the grasp of an inflexible, of an almost fierce guide,
who chose the paths, and turned the feet of each traveller, reluctant
or not, into the path the will of the guide had selected. And now, still
dreamily, she wondered whether she would ever try to rebel if the path
selected for her were one that she hated or feared, one that led into
any horror of darkness, or any horror of too great light. For light,
too, can be terrible, a sudden great light that shines pitilessly upon
one's own soul. She was of those who possess force and impulse, and she
knew it. She knew, too, that these are often rebellious. But to-day it
seemed to her that she might believe so much in destiny, be so entirely
certain of the inflexible purpose and power of the guide, that
her intellect might forbid her to rebel, because of rebellion's
fore-ordained inutility. Nevertheless, she supposed that if it was her
instinct to rebel, she would do so at the psychological moment, even
against the dictates of her intellect.

Gaspare remained beside her quietly. He often stood near her after they
had been talking together, and calmly shared the silence with her. She
liked that. It gave her an impression of his perfect confidence in her,
his perfect ease in her company.

"Don't you ever think that you can put a knife into destiny, Gaspare,"
she asked him presently, using an image he would be likely to
understand, "as you might put a knife into a man who tried to force you
to do something you didn't wish to do?"

"Signora, what would be the use? The knife is no good against Destiny,
nor the revolver either. And I have the permesso to carry one," he
added, with a smile, as if he realized that he was being whimsical.

"Well, then, we must just hope that Destiny will be very kind to us, be
a friend to us, a true comrade. I shall hope that and so must you."

"Si, Signora."

He realized that the conversation was finished, and went quietly away.

Hermione kept the letter of Artois. When he came back to the Bay she
wanted to show it to him, to ask him to read for her the meaning
between its lines. She put it away in her writing-table drawer, and then
resolved to forget the peculiar and disagreeable effect it had made upon
her.

A fortnight passed a