She had forgotten the warning of Artois. The dirty little beggar was
staring at the angel and wanted the angel to know it.
"Hermione! What do you mean?"
He looked at her, and there was genuine surprise in his face and in his
voice.
"How can you love me? I'm so ugly. Oh, I feel it here, I feel it horribly
in the midst of--of all this loveliness, with you."
She hid her face against his shoulder almost like one afraid.
"But you are not ugly! What nonsense! Hermione!"
He put his hand under her face and raised it, and the touch of his hand
against her cheek made her tremble. To-night she more than loved, she
worshipped him. Her intellect did not speak any more. Its voice was
silenced by the voice of the heart, by the voices of the senses. She felt
as if she would like to go down on her knees to him and thank him for
having loved her, for loving her. Abasement would have been a joy to her
just then, was almost a necessity, and yet there was pride in her, the
decent pride of a pure-natured woman who has never let herself be soiled.
"Hermione," he said, looking into her face. "Don't speak to me like that.
It's all wrong. It puts me in the wrong place, I a fool and you--what you
are. If that friend of yours could hear you--by Jove!"
There was something so boyish, so simple in his voice that Hermione
suddenly threw her arms round his neck and kissed him, as she might have
kissed a delightful child. She began to laugh through tears.
"Thank God you're not conceited!" she exclaimed.
"What about?" he asked.
But she did not answer. Presently they heard Gaspare's step on the
terrace. He came to them bareheaded, with shining eyes, to ask if they
were satisfied with Lucrezia. About himself he did not ask. He felt that
he had done all things for his padrona as he alone could have done them,
knowing her so well.
"Gaspare," Hermione said, "everything is perfect. Tell Lucrezia."
"Better not, signora. I will say you are fairly satisfied, as it is only
the first day. Then she will try to do better to-morrow. I know
Lucrezia."
And he gazed at them calmly with his enormous liquid eyes.
"Do not say too much, signora. It makes people proud."
She thought that she heard an odd Sicilian echo of Artois. The peasant
lad's mind reflected the mind of the subtle novelist for a moment.