id="id00171">And then, as before, it was evening. He had been out on the affairs of Captain Hahn, and was returning on foot along a path through the maize fields. The ripe crops made a wall to either hand, bronze red and man-high, gleaming like burnished metal in the shine of the sunset; and here, at a turning in the way, he met her face to face.

"Good evening, signorina," he said, stopping.

"Good evening, Signor Tenente," she answered, and would have passed on but that he barred the way as he stood.

There was no fear, no doubt, in the quiet of her face as she stood before him. Her eyes were great and dark, but untroubled, and upon the lips, where he had never seen a smile, was no tremor.

"Signorina!" he burst forth. "I, I have wanted to speak to you ever since that evening. I cannot bear that you should think of me as you do."

"I do not think of you," she answered, with the resonance of bell-music thrilling through the low tones of her voice.

He took a step nearer to her; she did not shrink nor fall back.

"But," he said, "I think of you always!" Her face did not change; its even quiet was a challenge and an exasperation. "Signorina, what can I do? This accursed war if it were not for that you would let me speak and at least you would listen. But now."

He broke off with a gesture of helpless anger. She did not alter the grave character of her regard.

"What is it that you wish to say to me?" she asked. "You see that I am listening."

Her very calm, the slender erectness of her body, her fearless and serious gaze, were a goad to him.

"Listening!" he cried. He choked down an impulse to be noisy. "Well then, listen! Signorina signorina, I, I am not one of those. That man who hanged himself, I would have prevented him and saved him. You heard me give the orders that he was to be watched and fed; fed, signorina! It was another who took the guards away and left him to himself."

"That," she said, "I knew."

"Ah!" He came yet closer. "You knew. Then."

He tried to take her hand. The impulse to touch her was irresistible; it was a famine in his being. Without stepping back, without, a movement of retreat or a change of countenance, she put her hands behind her back.

"Signorina!" He was close to her now; the heat of his face beat upon the ice of hers. "Oh! This I can't! Give me at least your hand. Signorina."

Her voice was as level, as calm, as quiet, and yet as loud with allurement as ever.

"Signor Tenente, no!"

His was the pervert blood, the virtues and the sins born of the promiscuity of races. Hers rigid, empty of invitation were the ripe Italian lips, pure, with the fastidious purity of her high birth and the childlike sweetness of her youth.

"Signorina!" He had meant to plead, but the force of her presence overwhelmed him. He felt himself sucked down in a whirlpool of impulse; doom was ahead; but the current of desire was too strong. A movement and his arms were about her!

"Love!" he gasped. His lips were upon hers, Kissing, kissing! He slaked himself on that dead and unresponsive mouth violently; he felt her frail and slender in the crush of his arms. All her virginal and girlish loveliness was his for a mad moment; then—. He released her. They stood apart. He passed a hand over his brow to clear the fog from his eyes.

"I, I" he stammered. He could see her now. She stood opposite him still, her back to the tall wall of maize that bounded the path. Her Hand was to her bosom; she breathed hard, and presently, while he stared, words misshaping themselves upon his abashed lips she smiled! Her sad, ripe mouth relaxed; all her grave face softened; pity the profound pity of a martyr who prays for "those who know not what they do" was alight in her face; the terrible mild mirth of those who are assured of victory these showed themselves like an ensign. She smiled!

He saw that smile, and at first vision he did not know it. "Signorina," he began again hopefully; then he stopped short. He saw again what he had seen in the village when Captain Hahn had struck his memorable, self-revealing blow. The smile the smile of those who choose death for the better part.

"Signorina!" His hands before his eyes hid her and her smile from him. "Please I beg—." There was no answer. He lowered his hands, and lifted timidly, repentantly, his face to seek pardon. But upon the path was no one. She had parted the stout stalks of maize and disappeared.

"God!" said Jovannic.

An energy possessed him. He charged along the narrow path between the high palisades of the metal-hued maize. Upon the next corner he encountered Captain Hahn, swollen and pompous and perfect.

"Well?" said Captain Hahn, exhaling his words as a pricked bladder exhales air. "Well, you searched those villages, did you?"

Jovannic saluted mechanically. Life his own life clogged his feet; to act was like wading in treacle. He had an impulse of utter wild rebellion, of ferocious self-assertion. Then:

"Zu Befehl, Herr Hauptmann!" he said, and saluted.

II

THE DAGO

Eight bells had sounded, and in the little triangular fo'c'sle of the Anna Maria the men of the port watch were waiting for their dinner. The daylight which entered by the open hatch overhead spread a carpet of light at the foot of the ladder, which slid upon the deck to the heave and fall of the old barque's blunt bows, and left in shadow the double row of bunks and the chests on which the men sat. From his seat nearest the ladder, Bill, the ship's inevitable Cockney, raised his flat voice in complaint.

"That bloomin' Dago takes 'is time over fetchin' the hash," he said.
"'E wants wakin' up a bit that's wot 'e wants."

Sprawling on the edge of his bunk forward, Dan, the oldest man in the ship, took his pipe from his lips in the deliberate way in which he did everything. Short in stature and huge in frame, the mass of him, even in that half-darkness of the fo'c'sle, showed somehow majestic and powerful.

"The mate came after 'im about somethin' or other," he said in his deep, slow tones.

"That's right," said another seaman. "It was about spillin' some tar on the deck, an' now the Dago's got to stop up this arternoon an' holystone it clean in his watch below."

"Bloomin' fool," growled the Cockney. But it was the wrong word, and the others were silent.

A man in trouble with an officer, though he be no seaman and a Dago, may always count on the sympathy of the fo'c'sle.

"'E ain't fit to paddle a bumboat," the Cockney went on. "Can't go aloft, can't stand 'is wheel, can't even fetch the hash to time."

"Yes!" Dan shifted slowly, and the younger man stopped short. "You better slip along to the galley, Bill, an' see about that grub."

The Cockney swore, but rose from his seat. Dan was not to be disobeyed in the fo'c'sle. But at that moment the hatch above was darkened.

"'Ere's the Dago," cried Bill. "Where you bin, you bloomin' fool?"

A bare foot came over the combing, feeling vaguely for the steps of the ladder. Dan sat up and laid by his pipe; two seamen went to assist in the safe delivery of their dinner.

"Carn't yer never learn to bring the grub down the ladder backwards?" Bill was demanding of the new-comer. "Want to capsize it all again, like yer done before?"

"Ah, no!"

The Dago stood in