ack on the head was of a brown so dark as to look nearly black.
Gaspare was dressed in a homely suit of light-colored linen with no
collar and a shirt open at the throat, showing a section of chest tanned
by the sun. Stout mountain boots were on his feet, and a white linen hat
was tipped carelessly to the back of his head, leaving his expressive,
ardently audacious, but not unpleasantly impudent face exposed to the
golden rays of which he had no fear.

As Delarey looked at him he felt oddly at home with him, almost as if he
stood beside a young brother. Yet he could scarcely speak Gaspare's
language, and knew nothing of his thoughts, his feelings, his hopes, his
way of life. It was an odd sensation, a subtle sympathy not founded upon
knowledge. It seemed to now into Delarey's heart out of the heart of the
sun, to steal into it with the music of the "Pastorale."

"I feel--I feel almost as if I belonged here," he whispered to Hermione,
at last.

She turned her head and looked down on him from her donkey. The tears
were still in her eyes.

"I always knew you belonged to the blessed, blessed south," she said, in
a low voice. "Do you care for that?"

She pointed towards the terrace.

"That music?"

"Yes."

"Tremendously, but I don't know why. Is it very beautiful?"

"I sometimes think it is the most beautiful music I have ever heard. At
any rate, I have always loved it more than all other music, and
now--well, you can guess if I love it now."

She dropped one hand against the donkey's warm shoulder. Maurice took it
in his warm hand.

"All Sicily, all the real, wild Sicily seems to be in it. They play it in
the churches on the night of the Natale," she went on, after a moment. "I
shall never forget hearing it for the first time. I felt as if it took
hold of my very soul with hands like the hands of the Bambino."

She broke off. A tear had fallen down upon her cheek.

"Avanti Gaspare!" she said.

Gaspare lifted his switch and gave Tito a tap, calling out "Ah!" in a
loud, manly voice. The donkey moved on, tripping carefully among the
stones. They mounted slowly up towards the "Pastorale." Presently
Hermione said to Maurice, who kept beside her in spite of the narrowness
of the path:

"Everything seems very strange to me to-day. Can you guess why?"

"I don't know. Tell me," he answered.

"It's this. I never expected to be perfectly happy. We all have our
dreams, I suppose. We all think now and then, 'If onl