"And the sick signore?" he asked. "Is he better?"
Maurice explained how things were.
"The signora is longing to come back to us," he said.
"Of course she is," said Gaspare, calmly.
Then suddenly he jumped up.
"Signorino," he said. "I am going to write a letter to the signora. She will like to have a letter from me. She will think she is in Sicily."
"And when you have finished, I will write," said Maurice.
"Si, signore."
And Gaspare ran off up the hill towards the cottage, leaving his master alone.
Maurice began to read the letter again, slowly. It made him feel almost as if he were with Hermione. He seemed to see her as he read, and he smiled. How good she was and true, and how enthusiastic! When he had finished the second reading of the letter he laid it down, and put his hands behind his head again, and looked up at the quivering blue. Then he thought of Artois. He remembered his tall figure, his robust limbs, his handsome, powerful face. It was strange to think that he was desperately ill, perhaps dying. Death—what must that be like? How deep the blue looked, as if there were thousands of miles of it, as if it stretched on and on forever! Artois, perhaps, was dying, but he felt as if he could never die, never even be ill. He stretched his body on the warm ground. The blue seemed to deny the fact of death. He tried to imagine Artois in bed in the heat of Africa, with the flies buzzing round him. Then he looked again at the letter, and reread that part in which Hermione wrote of her duties as sick-nurse.