June. Oh, Maurice, something in me is almost mad with joy, is
like Gaspare dancing the tarantella, when I think of coming up the
mountain-side again with you as I came that first day, that first day of
my real life. Tell Sebastiano he must play the 'Pastorale' to welcome me.
And you--but I seem to feel your dear welcome here, to feel your hands
holding mine, to see your eyes looking at me like Sicily. Isn't it
strange? I feel out here in Africa as if you were Sicily. But you are,
indeed, for me. You are Sicily, you are the sun, you are everything that
means joy to me, that means music, that means hope and peace. Buon
riposo, my dearest one. Can you feel--can you--how happy I am to-night?"

The second week in June! Maurice stood holding the letter in his hand.
The fair of San Felice would take place during the second week in June.
That was what he was thinking, not of Artois's convalescence, not of his
coming to Sicily. If Hermione arrived before June 11th, could he go to
the fair with Maddalena? He might go, of course. He might tell Hermione.
She would say "Go!" She believed in him and had never tried to curb his
freedom. A less suspicious woman than she was had surely never lived. But
if she were in Sicily, if he knew that she was there in the house of the
priest, waiting to welcome him at night when he came back from the fair,
it would--it would--He laid the letter down. There was a burning heat of
impatience, of anxiety, within him. Now that he had received this letter
he understood with what intensity he had been looking forward to this day
at the fair, to this last festa of his Sicilian life.

"Perhaps they will not come so soon!" he said to him self. "Perhaps they
will not be here."

And then he began to think of Artois, to realize the fact that he was
coming with Hermione, that he would be part of the final remnant of these
Sicilian days.

His feeling towards Artois in London had been sympathetic, even almost
reverential. He had looked at him as if through Hermione's eyes, had
regarded him with a sort of boyish reverence. Hermione had said that
Artois was a great man, and Maurice had felt that he was a great man, had
mentally sat at his feet. Perhaps in London he would be ready to sit at
his feet again. But was he ready to sit at his feet here in Sicily? As he
thought of Artois's penetrating eyes and cool, intellectual face, of his
air of authority, of his close intimacy with Hermione, he felt almost
afraid of