needed, and could not be comforted, and could not be schooled. It
complained as one feeble, but really it must be strong; for it was
pitilessly persistent in its grieving. It had a strange endurance.
Life, the passing of the years, could not change it, could not still
it. Those eternal hungers of which Hermione had spoken to Artois--they
must have their meaning. Somewhere, surely, there are the happy
hunting-grounds, dreamed of by the red man--there are the Elysian
Fields where the souls that have longed and suffered will find the
ultimate peace.

There came a tap at the door.

Hermione started up from the cushion against which she had pressed her
head, and opened her eyes, instinctively laying her hand on Vere's
volume of Rossetti, and pretending to read it.

"Avanti!" she said.

The door opened and Gaspare appeared. Hermione felt an immediate
sensation of comfort.

"Gaspare," she said, "what is it? I thought you were in bed."

"Ha bisogna Lei?" he said.

It was a most familiar phrase to Hermione. It had been often on
Gaspare's lips when he was a boy in Sicily, and she had always loved
it, feeling as if it sprang from a nature pleasantly ready to do
anything in her service. But to-night it had an almost startling
appropriateness, breaking in as if in direct response to her gnawing