"It was a pity she went," he continued. "The poor signora——"
"Why is it such a pity?" Maurice interrupted, almost roughly, almost suspiciously. "Why do you say 'the poor signora'?"
Gaspare stared at him with open surprise.
"I only meant——"
"The signora wished to go to Africa. She decided for herself. There is no reason to call her the poor signora."
"No, signore."
The boy's voice recalled Maurice to prudence.
"It was very good of her to go," he said, more quietly. "Perhaps she has saved the life of the sick signore by going."
"Si, signore."
Gaspare said no more, but as they rode up, drawing ever nearer to the bare mountain-side and the house of the priest, Maurice's heart reiterated the thought of the boy. Why had Hermione ever gone? What a madness it had all been, her going, his staying! He knew it now for a madness, a madness of the summer, of the hot, the burning south. In this terrible quiet of the mountains, without the sun, without the laughter and the voices and the movement of men, he understood that he had been mad, that there had been something in him, not all himself, which had run wild, despising restraint. And he had known that it was running wild, and he had thought to let it go just so far and no farther. He had set a limit of time to his wildness and its deeds. And he had set another limit. Surely he had. He had not ever meant to go too far. And then, just when he had said to himself "E' finito!" the irrevocable was at hand, the moment of delirium in which all things that should have been remembered were forgotten. What had led him? What spirit of evil? Or had he been led at all? Had not he rather deliberately forced his way to the tragic goal whither, through all these sunlit days, these starry nights, his feet had been tending?