se born in Sicily and of Sicilian blood. He seemed
to feel that this pupil might in time become the master, and to be put
upon his mettle, and he put forth all his cunning to be too much for
Delarey.

And Hermione was left alone, watching, for Lucrezia had disappeared,
suddenly mindful of some household duty.

When Delarey sprang up she felt a thrill of responsive excitement, and
when she watched his first steps, and noted the look of youth in him, the
supple southern grace that rivalled the boyish grace of Gaspare, she was
filled with that warm, that almost yearning admiration which is the
child of love. But another feeling followed--a feeling of melancholy. As
she watched him dancing with the four boys, a gulf seemed to yawn between
her and them. She was alone on her side of this gulf, quite alone. They
were remote from her. She suddenly realized that Delarey belonged to the
south, and that she did not. Despite all her understanding of the beauty
of the south, all her sympathy for the spirit of the south, all her
passionate love of the south, she was not of it. She came to it as a
guest. But Delarey was of it. She had never realized that absolutely till
this moment. Despite his English parentage and upbringing, the southern
strain in his ancestry had been revived in him. The drop of southern
blood in his veins was his master. She had not married an Englishman.

Once again, and in all the glowing sunshine, with Etna and the sea before
her, and the sound of Sebastiano's flute in her ears, she was on the
Thames Embankment in the night with Artois, and heard his deep voice
speaking to her.

"Does he know his own blood?" said the voice. "Our blood governs us when
the time comes."

And again the voice said:

"The possible call of the blood that he doesn't understand."

"The call of the blood." There was now something almost terrible to
Hermione in that phrase, something menacing and irresistible. Were men,
then, governed irrevocably, dominated by the blood that was in them?
Artois had certainly seemed to imply that they were, and he knew men as
few knew them. His powerful intellect, like a search-light, illumined the
hidden places, discovering the concealed things of the souls of men. But
Artois was not a religious man, and Hermione had a strong sense of
religion, though she did not cling, as many do, to any one creed. If the
call of the blood were irresistible in a man, then man was only a slave.
The criminal must