Gaspare looked more alert.
"Of where the signora will be?"
"Chi lo sa?"
He lay down on the warm ground, set his back against a rock, opened the book at hazard, and began to read slowly and carefully, while Gaspare, stretched on the grass, listened, with his chin in the palm of his hand. The story was of the fisherman and the Genie who was confined in a casket, and soon Gaspare was entirely absorbed by it. He kept his enormous brown eyes fixed upon Maurice's face, and moved his lips, silently forming, after him, the words of the tale. When it was finished he said:
"I should not like to be kept shut up like that, signore. If I could not be free I would kill myself. I will always be free."
He stretched himself on the warm ground like a young animal, then added:
"I shall not take a wife—ever."
Maurice shut the book and stretched himself, too, then moved away from the rock, and lay at full length with his hands clasped behind his head and his eyes, nearly shut, fixed upon the glimmer of the sea.
"Why not, Gasparino?"
"Because if one has a wife one is not free."