you to do something you didn't wish to do?"

"Signora, what would be the use? The knife is no good against Destiny,
nor the revolver either. And I have the permesso to carry one," he
added, with a smile, as if he realized that he was being whimsical.

"Well, then, we must just hope that Destiny will be very kind to us,
be a friend to us, a true comrade. I shall hope that and so must you."

"Si, Signora."

He realized that the conversation was finished, and went quietly away.

Hermione kept the letter of Artois. When he came back to the Bay she
wanted to show it to him, to ask him to read for her the meaning
between its lines. She put it away in her writing-table drawer, and
then resolved to forget the peculiar and disagreeable effect it had
made upon her.

A fortnight passed away before Artois' return. June came in upon the
Bay, bringing with it a more vivid life in the environs of Naples. As
the heat of the sun increased the vitality of the human motes that
danced in its beams seemed to increase also, to become more blatant,
more persistent. The wild oleander was in flower. The thorny cactus
put forth upon the rim of its grotesque leaves pale yellow blossoms to
rival the red geraniums that throng about it insolently in Italy. In
the streets of the city ragged boys ran by crying, "Fragole!" and
holding aloft the shallow baskets in which the rosy fruit made
splashes of happy color. The carters wore bright carnations above
their dusty ears. The children exposed their bare limbs to the sun,