one turned away her eyes. But they had read Vere's secret. She knew
what her child was doing in those hours of seclusion. And she remembered
her own passionate attempts to stave off despair by work. She remembered
her own failure.

"Poor little Vere!" That was her first thought. "But what is Emile
doing?" That was the second. He had discouraged her. He had told her the
truth. What was he telling Vere? A flood of bitter curiosity seemed to
rise in her, drowning many things.

"What I like is life, Signorina," said the Marchesino. "Driving, riding,
swimming, sport, fencing, being with beautiful ladies--that is life."

"Yes, of course, that is life," she said.

What was the good of trying to explain to him the inner life? He had no
imagination.

Her youth made her very drastic, very sweeping, in her secret mental
assertions.

She labelled the Marchesino "Philistine," and popped him into his
drawer.

Lunch was over, and they got up.

"Are you afraid of the heat out-of-doors, Marchese?" Hermione asked, "or
shall we have coffee in the garden? There is a trellis, and we shall be
out of the sun."

"Signora, I am delighted to go out."

He got his straw hat, and they went into the tiny garden and sat down on
basket-work chairs under a trellis, set in the shadow of some fig-trees.
Giulia brought them coffee, and the Marchesino lighted a cigarette.

He said to himself that he had never been in love before.

Vere wore a white dress. She had no hat on, but held rather carelessly
over her small, dark head a red parasol. It was evident that she was not
afraid even of the midday sun. That new look in her face, soft womanhood
at the windows gazing at a world more fully, if more sadly, understood,
fascinated him, sent the blood up to his head. There was a great change
in her. To-day she knew what before she had not known.

As he stared at Vere with adoring eyes suddenly there came into his mind
the question: "Who has taught her?"

And then he thought of the night when all in vain he had sung upon the
sea, while the Signorina and "un Signore" were hidden somewhere near
him.

The blood sang in his head, and something seemed to expand in his brain,
to press violently against his temples, as if striving to force its
way out. He put down his coffee cup, and the two perpendicular lines
appeared above his eyebrows, giving him an odd look, cruel and rather
catlike.

"If Emilio--"

At that moment he longed to put a knife into