The Call of the Blood - Page 98/317

Hermione quickly laid her hand on his.

"I was only laughing. You know your padrona trusts you to remember her as

she remembers you."

Gaspare lifted up her hand quickly, kissed it, and hurried away, lifting

his own hand to his eyes.

"These Sicilians know how to make one love them," said Hermione, with a

little catch in her voice. "I believe that boy would die for me if

necessary."

"I'm sure he would," said Maurice. "But one doesn't find a padrona like

you every day."

"Let us walk to the arch," she said. "I must take my last look at the

mountains with you."

Beyond the archway there was a large, flat rock, a natural seat from

which could be seen a range of mountains that was invisible from the

terrace. Hermione often sat on this rock alone, looking at the distant

peaks, whose outlines stirred her imagination like a wild and barbarous

music. Now she drew down Maurice beside her and kept his hand in hers.

She was thinking of many things, among others of the little episode that

had just taken place with Gaspare. His outburst of feeling, like fire

bursting up through a suddenly opened fissure in the crust of the earth,

had touched her and something more. It had comforted her, and removed

from her a shadowy figure that had been approaching her, the figure of a

fear. She fixed her eyes on the mountains, dark under the silver of the

moon.

"Maurice," she said. "Do you often try to read people?"

The pleasant look of almost deprecating modesty that Artois had noticed

on the night when they dined together in London came to Delarey's face.

"I don't know that I do, Hermione," he said. "Is it easy?"

"I think--I'm thinking it especially to-night--that it is horribly

difficult. One's imagination seizes hold of trifles, and magnifies them

and distorts them. From little things, little natural things, one

deduces--I mean one takes a midget and makes of it a monster. How one

ought to pray to see clear in people one loves! It's very strange, but I

think that sometimes, just because one loves, one is ready to be afraid,

to doubt, to exaggerate, to think a thing is gone when it is there. In

friendship one is more ready to give things their proper value--perhaps

because everything is of less value. Do you know that to-night I realize

for the first time the enormous difference there is between the love one

gives in love and the love one gives in friendship?"