life might be different, but they had
come to sorrow together. They had suffered together and been in sympathy
while they suffered. He had loved what she had loved, lost it when she
had lost it, wept for it when she had wept.

And he had been with her when she had waited for the coming of the
child.

Hermione really cared for three people: Gaspare was one of them. He knew
it. The other two were Vere and Emile Artois.

"Vere," said Artois, taking her two hands closely in his large hands,
and gazing into her face with the kind, even affectionate directness
that she loved in him: "do you know that to-day you are looking
insolent?"

"Insolent!" said the girl. "How dare you!"

She tried to take her hands away.

"Insolently young," he said, keeping them authoritatively.

"But I am young. What do you mean, Monsieur Emile?"

"I? It is your meaning I am searching for."

"I sha'n't let you find it. You are much too curious about people.
But--I've been having a game this morning."

"A game! Who was your playmate?"

"Never mind."

But her bright eyes went for the fraction of a second to Ruffo, who
close by in the boat was lying at his ease, his head thrown back, and
one of the cigarettes between his lips.

"What! That boy there?"

"Nonsense! Come along! Madre has been sitting at the window for ages
looking out for the boat. Couldn't you sail at all Gaspare?"

Artois had let go her hands, and now she turned to the Sicilian.

"To Naples, Signorina, and nearly to the Antico Giuseppone coming back."

"But we had to do a lot of tacking," said Artois. "Mon Dieu! That boy is
smoking one of my cigarettes! You sacrilegious little creature! You have
been robbing my box!"

Gaspare's eyes followed Artois' to Ruffo, who was watching them
attentively, but who now looked suddenly sleepy.

"It belongs to Madre."

"It was bought for me."

"I like you better with a pipe. You are too big for cigarettes. And
besides, artists always smoke pipes."

"Allow me to forget that I try to be an artist when I come to the
island, Vere."

"Yes, yes, I will," she said, with a pretty air of relenting. "You
poor thing, here you are a king incognito, and we all treat you quite
familiarly. I'll even go first, regardless of etiquette." And she went
off to the steps that led upward to the house.

Artois followed her. As he went he said to Ruffo in the Neapolitan
dialect:

"It's a good cigarette, isn't it? You are in luck this morning."