"No," he said.
Had the music been wild? He suspected that the harmony she worshipped had
passed on into the hideous crash of discords. And whose had been the
fault? Who creates human nature as it is? In what workshop, of what
brain, are forged the mad impulses of the wild heart of youth, are mixed
together subtly the divine aspirations which leap like the winged Mercury
to the heights, and the powerful appetites which lead the body into the
dark places of the earth? And why is the Giver of the divine the
permitter of those tremendous passions, which are not without their
glory, but which wreck so many human lives?
Perhaps a reason may be found in the sacredness of pity. Evil and agony
are the manure from which spring some of the whitest lilies that have
ever bloomed beneath that enigmatic blue which roofs the terror and the
triumph of the world. And while human beings know how to pity, human
beings will always believe in a merciful God.
A strange thought to come into such a mind as Artois's! Yet it came in
the twilight, and with it a sense of tears such as he had never felt
before.
With the twilight had come a little wind from Etna. It made something
near him flutter, something white, a morsel of paper among the stones by
which he was sitting. He looked down and saw writing, and bent to pick
the paper up.
"Emile may leave at once. But there is no good boat till the 10th.
We shall take that...."
Hermione's writing!
Artois understood at once. Maurice had had Hermione's letter. He had
known they were coming from Africa, and he had gone to the fair despite
that knowledge. He had gone with the girl who wept and prayed beside the
sea.
His hand closed over the paper.
"What is it, Emile? What have you picked up?"
"Only a little bit of paper."
He spoke quietly, tore it into tiny fragments and let them go upon the
wind.
"When will you come with me, Hermione? When shall we go to Italy?"
"I am saying 'a rivederci' now"--she dropped her voice--"and buon
riposo."
The white fragments blew away into the gathering night, separated from
one another by the careful wind.
* * * * * Three days later Hermione and Artois left Sicily, and Gaspare, leaning
out of the window of the train, looked his last on the Isle of the
Sirens. A fisherman on the beach by the inlet, not Salvatore, recognized
the boy and waved a friendly hand. But Gaspare did not see him.