"I am glad," Hermione said, holding out her hand to him.

He took it in an iron grip.

"Be very good to her when you're married, won't you?"

"Oh, she'll be all right with me," he answered, carelessly. "And I won't give her the slap in the face on the wedding-day."

"Hi—yi—yi—yi—yi!"

There was a shrill cry from the mountain and Maurice and Gaspare came leaping down, scattering the stones, the revolvers still in their hands.

"Look, signora, look!" cried Gaspare, pulling a sheet of paper from his pocket and holding it proudly up. "Do you see the holes? One, two, three—"

He began to count.

"And I made five. Didn't I, signore?"

"You're a dead shot, Gasparino. Did you hear us, Hermione?"

"Yes," she said. "But you didn't hear me."

"You? Did you call?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Sebastiano's got a message for you," Hermione said.

She could not tell him now the absurd impulse that had made her call him.

"What's the message, Sebastiano?" asked Maurice, in his stumbling Sicilian-Italian that was very imperfect, but that nevertheless had already the true accent of the peasants about Marechiaro.

"Signore, there will be a moon to-night."

"Gia. Lo so."

"Are you sleepy, signorino?"

He touched his eyes with his sinewy hands and made his face look drowsy. Maurice laughed.

"No."

"Are you afraid of being naked in the sea at night? But you need not enter it. Are you afraid of sleeping at dawn in a cave upon the sands?"

"What is it all?" asked Maurice. "Gaspare, I understand you best."

"I know," said Gaspare, joyously. "It's the fishing. Nito has sent. I told him to. Is it Nito, Sebastiano?"

Sebastiano nodded. Gaspare turned eagerly to Maurice.

"Oh, signore, you must come, you will come!"

"Where? In a boat?"

"No. We go down to the shore, to Isola Bella. We take food, wine, red wine, and a net. Between twenty-two and twenty-three o'clock is the time to begin. And the sea must be calm. Is the sea calm to-day, Sebastiano?"

"Like that."

Sebastiano moved his hand to and fro in the air, keeping it absolutely level. Gaspare continued to explain with gathering excitement and persuasiveness, talking to his master as much by gesture as by the words that Maurice could only partially understand.

"The sea is calm. Nito has the net, but he will not go into the sea. Per Dio, he is birbante. He will say he has the rheumatism, I know, and walk like that." (Gaspare hobbled to and fro before them, making a face of acute suffering.) "He has asked for me. Hasn't Nito asked for me, Sebastiano?"

Here Gaspare made a grimace at Sebastiano, who answered, calmly:

"Yes, he has asked for you to come with the padrone."

"I knew it. Then I shall undress. I shall take one end of the net while Nito holds the other, and I shall go out into the sea. I shall go up to here." (He put his hands up to his chin, stretching his neck like one avoiding a rising wave.) "And I shall wade, you'll see!—and if I come to a hole I shall swim. I can swim for hours, all day if I choose."

"And all night too?" said Hermione, smiling at his excitement.

"Davvero! But at night I must drink wine to keep out the cold. I come out like this." (He shivered violently, making his teeth chatter.) "Then I drink a glass and I am warm, and when they have taken the fish I go in again. We fish all along the shore from Isola Bella round by the point there, where there's the Casa delle Sirene, and to the caves beyond the Caffe Berardi. And when we've got enough—many fish—at dawn we sleep on the sand. And when the sun is up Carmela will take the fish and make a frittura, and we all eat it and drink more wine, and then—"

"And then—you're ready for the Campo Santo?" said Hermione.

"No, signora. Then we will dance the tarantella, and come home up the mountain singing, 'O sole mio!' and 'A mezzanotte a punto,' and the song of the Mafioso, and—"

Hermione began to laugh unrestrainedly. Gaspare, by his voice, his face, his gestures, had made them assist at a veritable orgie of labor, feasting, sleep, and mirth, all mingled together and chasing one another like performers in a revel. Even his suggestion of slumber on the sands was violent, as if they were to sleep with a kind of fury of excitement and determination.

"Signora!" he cried, staring as if ready to be offended.

Then he looked at Maurice, who was laughing, too, threw himself back against the wall, opened his mouth, and joined in with all his heart. But suddenly he stopped. His face changed, became very serious.

"I may go, signora?" he asked. "No one can fish as I can. The others will not go in far, and they soon get cold and want to put on their clothes. And the padrone! I must take care of the padrone! Guglielmo, the contadino, will sleep in the house, I know. Shall I call him? Guglielmo! Guglielmo!"

He vanished like a flash, they scarcely knew in what direction.

"He's alive!" exclaimed Maurice. "By Jove, he's alive, that boy! Glorious, glorious life! Oh, there's something here that—"

He broke off, looked down at the broad sea shimmering in the sun, then said:

"The sun, the sea, the music, the people, the liberty—it goes to my head, it intoxicates me."

"You'll go to-night?" she said.

"D'you mind if I do?"

"Mind? No. I want you to go. I want you to revel in this happy time, this splendid, innocent, golden time. And to-morrow we'll watch for you, Lucrezia and I, watch for you down there on the path. But—you'll bring us some of the fish, Maurice? You won't forget us?"

"Forget you!" he said. "You shall have all—"

"No, no. Only the little fish, the babies that Carmela rejects from the frittura."

"I'll go into the sea with Gaspare," said Maurice.

"I'm sure you will, and farther out even than he does."

"Ah, he'll never allow that. He'd swim to Africa first!"

That night, at twenty-one o'clock, Hermione and Lucrezia stood under the arch, and watched Maurice and Gaspare springing down the mountain-side as if in seven-leagued boots. Soon they disappeared into the darkness of the ravine, but for some time their loud voices could be heard singing lustily:

"Ciao, ciao, ciao, Morettina bella ciao, Prima di partire Un bacio ti voglio da'; Un bacio al papa, Un bacio alla mamma, Cinquanta alla mia fidanzata, Che vado a far solda'."

"I wish I were a man, Lucrezia," said Hermione, when the voices at length died away towards the sea.

"Signora, we were made for the men. They weren't made for us. But I like being a girl."

"To-night. I know why, Lucrezia."

And then the padrona and the cameriera sat down together on the terrace under the stars, and talked together about the man the cameriera loved, and his exceeding glory.

Meanwhile, Maurice and Gaspare were giving themselves joyously to the glory of the night. The glamour of the moon, which lay full upon the terrace where the two women sat, was softened, changed to a shadowy magic, in the ravine where the trees grew thickly, but the pilgrims did not lower their voices in obedience to the message of the twilight of the night. The joy of life which was leaping within them defied the subtle suggestions of mystery, was careless because it was triumphant, and all the way down to the sea they sang, Gaspare changing the song when it suited his mood to do so; and Maurice, as in the tarantella, imitating him with the swiftness that is born of sympathy. For to-night, despite their different ages, ranks, ways of life, their gayety linked them together, ruled out the differences, and made them closely akin, as they had been in Hermione's eyes when they danced upon the terrace. They did not watch the night. They were living too strongly to be watchful. The spirit of the dancing faun was upon them, and guided them down among the rocks and the olive-trees, across the Messina road, white under the moon, to the stony beach of Isola Bella, where Nito was waiting for them with the net.

Nito was not alone. He had brought friends of his and of Gaspare's, and a boy who staggered proudly beneath a pannier filled with bread and cheese, oranges and apples, and dark blocks of a mysterious dolce. The wine-bottles were not intrusted to him, but were in the care of Giulio, one of the donkey-boys who had carried up the luggage from the station. Gaspare and his padrone were welcomed with a lifting of hats, and for a moment there was a silence, while the little group regarded the "Inglese" searchingly. Had Maurice felt any strangeness, any aloofness, the sharp and sensitive Sicilians would have at once been conscious of it, and light-hearted gayety might have given way to gravity, though not to awkwardness. But he felt, and therefore showed, none. His soft hat cocked at an impudent angle over his sparkling, dark eyes, his laughing lips, his easy, eager manner, and his pleasant familiarity with Gaspare at once reassured everybody, and when he cried out, "Ciao, amici, ciao!" and waved a pair of bathing drawers towards the sea, indicating that he was prepared to be the first to go in with the net, there was a general laugh, and a babel of talk broke forth—talk which he did not fully understand, yet which did not make him feel even for a moment a stranger.

Gaspare at once took charge of the proceedings as one born to be a leader of fishermen. He began by ordering wine to be poured into the one glass provided, placed it in Maurice's hand, and smiled proudly at his pupil's quick "Alla vostra salute!" before tossing it off. Then each one in turn, with an "Alla sua salute!" to Maurice, took a drink from the great, leather bottle; and Nito, shaking out his long coil of net, declared that it was time to get to work.

Gaspare cast a sly glance at Maurice, warning him to be prepared for a comedy, and Maurice at once remembered the scene on the terrace when Gaspare had described Nito's "birbante" character, and looked out for rheumatics.

"Who goes into the sea, Nito?" asked Gaspare, very seriously.

Nito's wrinkled and weather-beaten face assumed an expression of surprise.

"Who goes into the sea!" he ejaculated. "Why, don't we all know who likes wading, and can always tell the best places for the fish?"

He paused, then as Gaspare said nothing, and the others, who had received a warning sign from him, stood round with deliberately vacant faces, he added, clapping Gaspare on the shoulder, and holding out one end of the net:

"Off with your clothes, compare, and we will soon have a fine frittura for Carmela."

But Gaspare shook his head.

"In summer I don't mind. But this is early in the year, and, besides—"

"Early in the year! Who told me the signore distinto would—"

"And besides, compare, I've got the stomach-ache."

He deftly doubled himself up and writhed, while the lips of the others twitched with suppressed amusement.

"Comparedro, I don't believe it!"

"Haven't I, signorino?" cried Gaspare, undoubling himself, pointing to his middleman, and staring hard at Maurice.

"Si, si! E vero, e vero!" cried Maurice.

"I've been eating Zampaglione, and I am full. If I go into the sea to-night I shall die."

"Mamma mia!" ejaculated Nito, throwing up his hands towards the stars.

He dared not give the lie to the "signore distinto," yet he had no trust in Gaspare's word, and had gained no sort of conviction from his eloquent writhings.

"You must go in, Nito," said Gaspare.

"I—Madonna!"

"Why not?"

"Why not?" cried Nito, in a plaintive whine that was almost feminine. "I go into the sea with my rheumatism!"

Abruptly one of his legs gave way, and he stood before them in a crooked attitude.

"Signore," he said to Maurice. "I would go into the sea, I would stay there all night, for I love it, but Dr. Marini has forbidden me to enter it. See how I walk!"

And he began to hobble up and down exactly as Gaspare had on the terrace, looking over his shoulder at Maurice all the time to see whether his deception was working well. Gaspare, seeing that Nito's attention was for the moment concentrated, slipped away behind a boat that was drawn up on the beach; and Maurice, guessing what he was doing, endeavored to make Nito understand his sympathy.

"Molto forte—molto dolore?" he said.

"Si, signore!"

And Nito burst forth into a vehement account of his sufferings, accompanied by pantomime.

"It takes me in the night, signore! Madonna, it is like rats gnawing at my legs, and nothing will stop it. Pancrazia—she is my wife, signore—Pancrazia, she gets out of bed and she heats oil to rub it on, but she might as well put it on the top of Etna for all the good it does me. And there I lie like a—"

"Hi—yi—yi—yi—yi!"

A wild shriek rent the air, and Gaspare, clad in a pair of bathing drawers, bounded out from behind the boat, gave Nito a cuff on the cheek, executed some steps of the tarantella, whirled round, snatched up one end of the net, and cried:

"Al mare, al mare!"

Nito's rheumatism was no more. His bent leg straightened itself as if by magic, and he returned Gaspare's cuff by an affectionate slap on his bare shoulder, exclaiming to Maurice:

"Isn't he terribile, signore? Isn't he terribile?"

Nito lifted up the other end of the net and they all went down to the shore.

That night it seemed to Delarey as if Sicily drew him closer to her breast. He did not know why he had now for the first time the sensation that at last he was really in his natural place, was really one with the soil from which an ancestor of his had sprung, and with the people who had been her people. That Hermione's absence had anything to do with his almost wild sense of freedom did not occur to him. All he knew was this, that alone among these Sicilian fishermen in the night, not understanding much of what they said, guessing at their jokes, and sharing in their laughter, without always knowing what had provoked it, he was perfectly at home, perfectly happy.

Gaspare went into the sea, wading carefully through the silver waters, and Maurice, from the shore, watched his slowly moving form, taking a lesson which would be useful to him later. The coast-line looked enchanted in the glory of the moon, in the warm silence of the night, but the little group of men upon the shore scarcely thought of its enchantment. They felt it, perhaps, sometimes faintly in their gayety, but they did not savor its wonder and its mystery as Hermione would have savored them had she been there.

The naked form of Gaspare, as he waded far out in the shallow sea, was like the form of a dream creature rising out of waves of a dream. When he called to them across the silver surely something of the magic of the night was caught and echoed in his voice. When he lifted the net, and its black and dripping meshes slipped down from his ghostly hands into the ghostly movement that was flickering about him, and the circles tipped with light widened towards sea and shore, there was a miracle of delicate and fantastic beauty delivered up tenderly like a marvellous gift to the wanderers of the dark hours. But Sicily scarcely wonders at Sicily. Gaspare was intent only on the catching of fish, and his companions smote the night with their jokes and their merry, almost riotous laughter.

The night wore on. Presently they left Isola Bella, crossed a stony spit of land, and came into a second and narrower bay, divided by a turmoil of jagged rocks and a bold promontory covered with stunted olive-trees, cactus, and seed-sown earth plots, from the wide sweep of coast that melted into the dimness towards Messina. Gathered together on the little stones of the beach, in the shadow of some drawn-up fishing-boats, they took stock of the fish that lay shining in the basket, and broke their fast on bread and cheese and more draughts from the generous wine-bottle.

Gaspare was dripping, and his thin body shook as he gulped down the wine.

"Basta Gaspare!" Maurice said to him. "You mustn't go in any more."

"No, no, signore, non basta! I can fish all night. Once the wine has warmed me, I can—"

"But I want to try it."

"Oh, signore, what would the signora say? You are a stranger. You will take cold, and then the signora will blame me and say I did not take proper care of my padrone."

But Delarey was determined. He stripped off his clothes, put on his bathing drawers, took up the net, and, carefully directed by the admiring though protesting Gaspare, he waded into the sea.

For a moment he shuddered as the calm water rose round him. Then, English fashion, he dipped under, with a splash that brought a roar of laughter to him from the shore.

"Meglio cosi!" he cried, coming up again in the moonlight. "Adesso sto bene!"

The plunge had made him suddenly feel tremendously young and triumphant, reckless with a happiness that thrilled with audacity. As he waded out he began to sing in a loud voice:

"Ciao, ciao, ciao, Morettina bella ciao, Prima di partire Un bacio ti voglio da'."

Gaspare, who was hastily dressing by the boats, called out to him that his singing would frighten away the fish, and he was obediently silent. He imprisoned the song in his heart, but that went on singing bravely. As he waded farther he felt splendid, as if he were a lord of life and of the sea. The water, now warm to him, seemed to be embracing him as it crept upward towards his throat. Nature was clasping him with amorous arms. Nature was taking him for her own.

"Nature, nature!" he said to himself. "That's why I'm so gloriously happy here, because I'm being right down natural."

His mind made an abrupt turn, like a coursed hare, and he suddenly found himself thinking of the night in London, when he had sat in the restaurant with Hermione and Artois and listened to their talk, reverently listened. Now, as the net tugged at his hand, influenced by the resisting sea, that talk, as he remembered it, struck him as unnatural, as useless, and the thoughts which he had then admired and wondered at, as complicated and extraordinary. Something in him said, "That's all unnatural." The touch of the water about his body, the light of the moon upon him, the breath of the air in his wet face drove out his reverence for what he called "intellectuality," and something savage got hold of his soul and shook it, as if to wake up the sleeping self within him, the self that was Sicilian.

As he waded in the water, coming ever nearer to the jagged rocks that shut out from his sight the wide sea and something else, he felt as if thinking and living were in opposition, as if the one were destructive of the other; and the desire to be clever, to be talented, which had often assailed him since he had known, and especially since he had loved, Hermione, died out of him, and he found himself vaguely pitying Artois, and almost despising the career and the fame of a writer. What did thinking matter? The great thing was to live, to live with your body, out-of-doors, close to nature, somewhat as the savages live. When he waded to shore for the first time, and saw, as the net was hauled in, the fish he had caught gleaming and leaping in the light, he could have shouted like a boy.

He seized the net once more, but Gaspare, now clothed, took hold of him by the arm with a familiarity that had in it nothing disrespectful.

"Signore, basta, basta! Giulio will go in now."

"Si! si!" cried Giulio, beginning to tug at his waistcoat buttons.

"Once more, Gaspare!" said Maurice. "Only once!"

"But if you take cold, signorino, the signora—"

"I sha'n't catch cold. Only once!"

He broke away, laughing, from Gaspare, and was swiftly in the sea. The Sicilians looked at him with admiration.

"E' veramente piu Siciliano di noi!" exclaimed Nito.

The others murmured their assent. Gaspare glowed with pride in his pupil.

"I shall make the signore one of us," he said, as he deftly let out the coils of the net.

"But how long is he going to stay?" asked Nito. "Will he not soon be going back to his own country?"

For a moment Gaspare's countenance fell.

"When the heat comes," he began, doubtfully. Then he cheered up.

"Perhaps he will take me with him to England," he said.

This time Maurice waded with the net into the shadow of the rocks out of the light of the moon. The night was waning, and a slight chill began to creep into the air. A little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling its surface, died away, then softly came again. As he moved into the darkness Maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received a slight check. The night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at such an hour. Upon the shore he saw the forms of his companions, but they looked remote and phantom-like. He did not hear their voices. Perhaps the slow approach of dawn was beginning to affect them, and the little wind that was springing up chilled their merriment and struck them to silence. Before him the dense blackness of the rocks rose like a grotesque wall carved in diabolic shapes, and as he stared at these shapes he had an odd fancy that they were living things, and that they were watching him at his labor. He could not get this idea, that he was being watched, out of his head, and for a moment he forgot about the fish, and stood still, staring at the monsters, whose bulky forms reared themselves up into the moonlight from which they banished him.

"Signore! Signorino!"

There came to him a cry of protest from the shore. He started, moved forward with the net, and went under water. He had stepped into a deep hole. Still holding fast to the net, he came up to the surface, shook his head, and struck out. As he did so he heard another cry, sharp yet musical. But this cry did not come from the beach where his companions were gathered. It rose from the blackness of the rocks close to him, and it sounded like the cry of a woman. He winked his eyes to get the water out of them, and swam for the rocks, heedless of his duty as a fisherman. But the net impeded him, and again there was a shout from the shore:

"Signorino! Signorino! E' pazzo Lei?"

Reluctantly he turned and swam back to the shallow water. But when his feet touched bottom he stood still. That cry of a woman from the mystery of the rocks had startled, had fascinated his ears. Suddenly he remembered that he must be near to that Casa delle Sirene, whose little light he had seen from the terrace of the priest's house on his first evening in Sicily. He longed to hear that woman's voice again. For a moment he thought of it as the voice of a siren, of one of those beings of enchantment who lure men on to their destruction, and he listened eagerly, almost passionately, while the ruffled water eddied softly about his breast. But no music stole to him from the blackness of the rocks, and at last he turned slowly and waded to the shore.

He was met with merry protests. Nito declared that the net had nearly been torn out of his hands. Gaspare, half undressed to go to his rescue, anxiously inquired if he had come to any harm. The rocks were sharp as razors near the point, and he might have cut himself to pieces upon them. He apologized to Nito and showed Gaspare that he was uninjured. Then, while the others began to count the fish, he went to the boats to put on his clothes, accompanied by Gaspare.

"Why did you swim towards the rocks, signorino?" asked the boy, looking at him with a sharp curiosity.

Delarey hesitated for a moment. He was inclined, he scarcely knew why, to keep silence about the cry he had heard. Yet he wanted to ask Gaspare something.

"Gaspare," he said, at last, as they reached the boats, "was any one of you on the rocks over there just now?"

He had forgotten to number his companions when he reached the shore. Perhaps one was missing, and had wandered towards the point to watch him fishing.

"No, signore. Why do you ask?"

Again Delarey hesitated. Then he said:

"I heard some one call out to me there."

He began to rub his wet body with a towel.

"Call! What did they call?"

"Nothing; no words. Some one cried out."

"At this hour! Who should be there, signore?"

The action of the rough towel upon his body brought a glow of warmth to Delarey, and the sense of mystery began to depart from his mind.

"Perhaps it was a fisherman," he said.

"They do not fish from there, signore. It must have been me you heard. When you went under the water I cried out. Drink some wine, signorino."

He held a glass full of wine to Delarey's lips. Delarey drank.

"But you've got a man's voice, Gaspare!" he said, putting down the glass and beginning to get into his clothes.

"Per Dio! Would you have me squeak like a woman, signore?"

Delarey laughed and said no more. But he knew it was not Gaspare's voice he had heard.

The net was drawn up now for the last time, and as soon as Delarey had dressed they set out to walk to the caves on the farther side of the rocks, where they meant to sleep till Carmela was about and ready to make the frittura. To reach them they had to clamber up from the beach to the Messina road, mount a hill, and descend to the Caffe Berardi, a small, isolated shanty which stood close to the sea, and was used in summer-time by bathers who wanted refreshment. Nito and the rest walked on in front, and Delarey followed a few paces behind with Gaspare. When they reached the summit of the hill a great sweep of open sea was disclosed to their view, stretching away to the Straits of Messina, and bounded in the far distance by the vague outlines of the Calabrian Mountains. Here the wind met them more sharply, and below them on the pebbles by the caffe they could see the foam of breaking waves. But to the right, and nearer to them, the sea was still as an inland pool, guarded by the tree-covered hump of land on which stood the house of the sirens. This hump, which would have been an islet but for the narrow wall of sheer rock which joined it to the main-land, ran out into the sea parallel to the road.

On the height, Delarey paused for a moment, as if to look at the wide view, dim and ethereal, under the dying moon.

"Is that Calabria?" he asked.

"Si, signore. And there is the caffe. The caves are beyond it. You cannot see them from here. But you are not looking, signorino!"

The boy's quick eyes had noticed that Delarey was glancing towards the tangle of trees, among which was visible a small section of the gray wall of the house of the sirens.

"How calm the sea is there!" Delarey said, swiftly.

"Si, signore. That is where you can see the light in the window from our terrace."

"There's no light now."

"How should there be? They are asleep. Andiamo?"

They followed the others, who were now out of sight. When they reached the caves, Nito and the boys had already flung themselves down upon the sand and were sleeping. Gaspare scooped out a hollow for Delarey, rolled up his jacket as a pillow for his padrone's head, murmured a "Buon riposo!" lay down near him, buried his face in his arms, and almost directly began to breathe with a regularity that told its tale of youthful, happy slumber.

It was dark in the cave and quite warm. The sand made a comfortable bed, and Delarey was luxuriously tired after the long walk and the wading in the sea. When he lay down he thought that he, too, would be asleep in a moment, but sleep did not come to him, though he closed his eyes in anticipation of it. His mind was busy in his weary body, and that little cry of a woman still rang in his ears. He heard it like a song sung by a mysterious voice in a place of mystery by the sea. Soon he opened his eyes. Turning a little in the sand, away from his companions, he looked out from the cave, across the sloping beach and the foam of the waves, to the darkness of trees on the island. (So he called the place of the siren's house to himself now, and always hereafter.) From the cave he could not see the house, but only the trees, a formless, dim mass that grew about it. The monotonous sound of wave after wave did not still the cry in his ears, but mingled with it, as must have mingled with the song of the sirens to Ulysses the murmur of breaking seas ever so long ago. And he thought of a siren in the night stealing to a hidden place in the rocks to watch him as he drew the net, breast high in the water. There was romance in his mind to-night, new-born and strange. Sicily had put it there with the wild sense of youth and freedom that still possessed him. Something seemed to call him away from this cave of sleep, to bid his tired body bestir itself once more. He looked at the dark forms of his comrades, stretched in various attitudes of repose, and suddenly he knew he could not sleep. He did not want to sleep. He wanted—what? He raised himself to a sitting posture, then softly stood up, and with infinite precaution stole out of the cave.

The coldness of the coming dawn took hold on him on the shore, and he saw in the east a mysterious pallor that was not of the moon, and upon the foam of the waves a light that was ghastly and that suggested infinite weariness and sickness. But he did not say this to himself. He merely felt that the night was quickly departing, and that he must hasten on his errand before the day came.

He was going to search for the woman who had cried out to him in the sea. And he felt as if she were a creature of the night, of the moon and of the shadows, and as if he could never hope to find her in the glory of the day.



VII

Delarey stole along the beach, walking lightly despite his fatigue. He felt curiously excited, as if he were on the heels of some adventure. He passed the Caffe Berardi almost like a thief in the night, and came to the narrow strip of pebbles that edged the still and lakelike water, protected by the sirens' isle. There he paused. He meant to gain that lonely land, but how? By the water lay two or three boats, but they were large and clumsy, impossible to move without aid. Should he climb up to the Messina road, traverse the spit of ground that led to the rocky wall, and try to make his way across it? The feat would be a difficult one, he thought. But it was not that which deterred him. He was impatient of delay, and the detour would take time. Between him and the islet was the waterway. Already he had been in the sea. Why not go in again? He stripped, packed his clothes into a bundle, tied roughly with a rope made of his handkerchief and bootlaces, and waded in. For a long way the water was shallow. Only when he was near to the island did it rise to his breast, to his throat, higher at last. Holding the bundle on his head with one hand, he struck out strongly and soon touched bottom again. He scrambled out, dressed on a flat rock, then looked for a path leading upward.

The ground was very steep, almost precipitous, and thickly covered with trees and with undergrowth. This undergrowth concealed innumerable rocks and stones which shifted under his feet and rolled down as he began to ascend, grasping the bushes and the branches. He could find no path. What did it matter? All sense of fatigue had left him. With the activity of a cat he mounted. A tree struck him across the face. Another swept off his hat. He felt that he had antagonists who wished to beat him back to the sea, and his blood rose against them. He tore down a branch that impeded him, broke it with his strong hands, and flung it away viciously. His teeth were set and his nerves tingled, and he was conscious of the almost angry joy of keen bodily exertion. The body—that was his God to-night. How he loved it, its health and strength, its willingness, its capacities! How he gloried in it! It had bounded down the mountain. It had gone into the sea and revelled there. It had fished and swum. Now it mounted upward to discovery, defying the weapons that nature launched against it. Splendid, splendid body!

He fought with the trees and conquered them. His trampling feet sent the stones leaping downward to be drowned in the sea. His swift eyes found the likely places for a foothold. His sinewy hands forced his enemies to assist him in the enterprise they hated. He came out on to the plateau at the summit of the island and stood still, panting, beside the house that hid there.

Its blind, gray wall confronted him coldly in the dimness, one shuttered window, like a shut eye, concealing the interior, the soul of the house that lay inside its body. In this window must have been set the light he had seen from the terrace. He wished there were a light burning now. Had he swum across the inlet and fought his way up through the wood only to see a gray wall, a shuttered window? That cry had come from the rocks, yet he had been driven by something within him to this house, connecting—he knew not why—the cry with it and with the far-off light that had been like a star caught in the sea. Now he said to himself that he should have gone back to the rocks and sought the siren there. Should he go now? He hesitated for a moment, leaning against the wall of the house.

"Maju torna, maju veni Cu li belli soi ciureri; Oh chi pompa chi nni fa; Maju torna, maju e cca!

"Maju torna, maju vinni, Duna isca a li disinni; Vinni riccu e ricchi fa, Maju viva! Maju e cca!"

He heard a girl's voice singing near him, whether inside the house or among the trees he could not at first tell. It sang softly yet gayly, as if the sun were up and the world were awake, and when it died away Delarey felt as if the singer must be in the dawn, though he stood still in the night. He put his ear to the shuttered window and listened.

"L'haju; nun l'haju?"

The voice was speaking now with a sort of whimsical and half-pathetic merriment, as if inclined to break into laughter at its own childish wistfulness.

"M'ama; nun m'ama?"

It broke off. He heard a little laugh. Then the song began again:

"Maju viju, e maju cogghiu, Bona sorti di Diu vogghiu; Ciuri di maju cogghiu a la campia, Diu, pinzaticci vu a la sorti mia!"

The voice was not in the house. Delarey was sure of that now. He was almost sure, too, that it was the same voice which had cried out to him from the rocks. Moving with precaution, he stole round the house to the farther side, which looked out upon the open sea, keeping among the trees, which grew thickly about the house on three sides, but which left it unprotected to the sea-winds on the fourth.

A girl was standing in this open space, alone, looking seaward, with one arm out-stretched, one hand laid lightly, almost caressingly, upon the gnarled trunk of a solitary old olive-tree, the other arm hanging at her side. She was dressed in some dark, coarse stuff, with a short skirt, and a red handkerchief tied round her head, and seemed in the pale and almost ghastly light in which night and day were drawing near to each other to be tall and slim of waist. Her head was thrown back, as if she were drinking in the breeze that heralded the dawn—drinking it in like a voluptuary.

Delarey stood and watched her. He could not see her face.

She spoke some words in dialect in a clear voice. There was no one else visible. Evidently she was talking to herself. Presently she laughed again, and began to sing once more:

"Maju viju, e maju cogghiu, A la me'casa guaj nu' nni vogghiu; Ciuri di maju cogghiu a la campia, Oru ed argentu a la sacchetta mia!"

There was an African sound in the girl's voice—a sound of mystery that suggested heat and a force that could be languorous and stretch itself at ease. She was singing the song the Sicilian peasant girls join in on the first of May, when the ciuri di maju is in blossom, and the young countrywomen go forth in merry bands to pick the flower of May, and, turning their eyes to the wayside shrine, or, if there be none near, to the east and the rising sun, lift their hands full of the flowers above their heads, and, making the sign of the cross, murmur devoutly:

"Divina Pruvidenza, pruvviditimi; Divina Pruvidenza, cunsulatimi; Divina Pruvidenza e granni assai; Cu' teni fidi a Diu, 'un pirisci mai!"



Delarey knew neither song nor custom, but his ears were fascinated by the voice and the melody. Both sounded remote and yet familiar to him, as if once, in some distant land—perhaps of dreams—he had heard them before. He wished the girl to go on singing, to sing on and on into the dawn while he listened in his hiding-place, but she suddenly turned round and stood looking towards him, as if something had told her that she was not alone. He kept quite still. He knew she could not see him, yet he felt as if she was aware that he was there, and instinctively he held his breath and leaned backward into deeper shadow. After a minute the girl took a step forward, and, still staring in his direction, called out:

"Padre?"

Then Delarey knew that it was her voice that he had heard when he was in the sea, and he suddenly changed his desire. Now he no longer wished to remain unseen, and without hesitation he came out from the trees. The girl stood where she was, watching him as he came. Her attitude showed neither surprise nor alarm, and when he was close to her, and could at last see her face, he found that its expression was one of simple, bold questioning. It seemed to be saying to him quietly, "Well, what do you want of me?"

Delarey was not acquainted with the Arab type of face. Had he been he would have at once been struck by the Eastern look in the girl's long, black eyes, by the Eastern cast of her regular, slightly aquiline features. Above her eyes were thin, jet-black eyebrows that looked almost as if they were painted. Her chin was full and her face oval in shape. She had hair like Gaspare's, black-brown, immensely thick and wavy, with tiny feathers of gold about the temples. She was tall, and had the contours of a strong though graceful girl just blooming into womanhood. Her hands were as brown as Delarey's, well shaped, but the hands of a worker. She was perhaps eighteen or nineteen, and brimful of lusty life.

After a minute of silence Delarey's memory recalled some words of Gaspare's, till then forgotten.

"You are Maddalena!" he said, in Italian.

The girl nodded.

"Si, signore."

She uttered the words softly, then fell into silence again, staring at him with her lustrous eyes, that were like black jewels.

"You live here with Salvatore?"

She nodded once more and began to smile, as if with pleasure at his knowledge of her.

Delarey smiled too, and made with his arms the motion of swimming. At that she laughed outright and broke into quick speech. She spoke vivaciously, moving her hands and her whole body. Delarey could not understand much of what she said, but he caught the words mare and pescatore, and by her gestures knew that she was telling him she had been on the rocks and had seen his mishap. Suddenly in the midst of her talk she uttered the little cry of surprise or alarm which he had heard as he came up above water, pointed to her lips to indicate that she had given vent to it, and laughed again with all her heart. Delarey laughed too. He felt happy and at ease with his siren, and was secretly amused at his thought in the sea of the magical being full of enchantment who sang to lure men to their destruction. This girl was simply a pretty, but not specially uncommon, type of the Sicilian contadina—young, gay, quite free from timidity, though gentle, full of the joy of life and of the nascent passion of womanhood, blossoming out carelessly in the sunshine of the season of flowers. She could sing, this island siren, but probably she could not read or write. She could dance, could perhaps innocently give and receive love. But there was in her face, in her manner, nothing deliberately provocative. Indeed, she looked warmly pure, like a bright, eager young animal of the woods, full of a blithe readiness to enjoy, full of hope and of unself-conscious animation.

Delarey wondered why she was not sleeping, and strove to ask her, speaking carefully his best Sicilian, and using eloquent gestures, which set her smiling, then laughing again. In reply to him she pointed towards the sea, then towards the house, then towards the sea once more. He guessed that some fisherman had risen early to go to his work, and that she had got up to see him off, and had been too wakeful to return to bed.

"Niente piu sonno!" he said, opening wide his eyes.

"Niente! Niente!"

He feigned fatigue. She took his travesty seriously, and pointed to the house, inviting him by gesture to go in and rest there. Evidently she believed that, being a stranger, he could not speak or understand much of her language. He did not even try to undeceive her. It amused him to watch her dumb show, for her face spoke eloquently and her pretty, brown hands knew a language that was delicious. He had no longer any thought of sleep, but he felt curious to see the interior of the cottage, and he nodded his head in response to her invitation. At once she became the hospitable peasant hostess. Her eyes sparkled with eagerness and pleasure, and she went quickly by him to the door, which stood half open, pushed it back, and beckoned to him to enter.

He obeyed her, went in, and found himself almost in darkness, for the big windows on either side of the door were shuttered, and only a tiny flame, like a spark, burned somewhere among the dense shadows of the interior at some distance from him. Pretending to be alarmed at the obscurity, he put out his hand gropingly, and let it light on her arm, then slip down to her warm, strong young hand.

"I am afraid!" he exclaimed.

He heard her merry laugh and felt her trying to pull her hand away, but he held it fast, prolonging a joke that he found a pleasant one. In that moment he was almost as simple as she was, obeying his impulses carelessly, gayly, without a thought of wrong—indeed, almost without thought at all. His body was still tingling and damp with the sea-water. Her face was fresh with the sea-wind. He had never felt more wholesome or as if life were a saner thing.

She dragged her hand out of his at last; he heard a grating noise, and a faint light sputtered up, then grew steady as she moved away and set a match to a candle, shielding it from the breeze that entered through the open door with her body.

"What a beautiful house!" he cried, looking curiously around.

He saw such a dwelling as one may see in any part of Sicily where the inhabitants are not sunk in the direst poverty and squalor, a modest home consisting of two fair-sized rooms, one opening into the other. In each room was a mighty bed, high and white, with fat pillows, and a counterpane of many colors. At the head of each was pinned a crucifix and a little picture of the Virgin, Maria Addolorata, with a palm branch that had been blessed, and beneath the picture in the inner room a tiny light, rather like an English night-light near its end, was burning. It was this that Delarey had seen like a spark in the distance. At the foot of each bed stood a big box of walnut wood, carved into arabesques and grotesque faces. There were a few straw chairs and kitchen utensils. An old gun stood in a corner with a bundle of wood. Not far off was a pan of charcoal. There were also two or three common deal-tables, on one of which stood the remains of a meal, a big jar containing wine, a flat loaf of coarse brown bread, with a knife lying beside it, some green stuff in a plate, and a slab of hard, yellow cheese.

Delarey was less interested in these things than in the display of photographs, picture-cards, and figures of saints that adorned the walls, carefully arranged in patterns to show to the best advantage. Here were colored reproductions of actresses in languid attitudes, of peasants dancing, of babies smiling, of elaborate young people with carefully dressed hair making love with "Molti Saluti!" "Una stretta di Mano!" "Mando un bacio!" "Amicizia eterna!" and other expressions of friendship and affection, scribbled in awkward handwritings across and around them. And mingled with them were representations of saints, such as are sold at the fairs and festivals of Sicily, and are reverently treasured by the pious and superstitious contadine; San Pancrazio, Santa Leocanda, the protector of child-bearing women; Sant Aloe, the patron saint of the beasts of burden; San Biagio, Santo Vito, the patron saint of dogs; and many others, with the Bambino, the Immacolata, the Madonna di Loreto, the Madonna della Rocca.

In the faint light cast by the flickering candle, the faces of saints and actresses, of smiling babies, of lovers and Madonnas peered at Delarey as if curious to know why at such an hour he ventured to intrude among them, why he thus dared to examine them when all the world was sleeping. He drew back from them at length and looked again at the great bed with its fat pillows that stood in the farther room secluded from the sea-breeze. Suddenly he felt a longing to throw himself down and rest.

The girl smiled at him with sympathy.

"That is my bed," she said, simply. "Lie down and sleep, signorino."

Delarey hesitated for a moment. He thought of his companions. If they should wake in the cave and miss him what would they think, what would they do? Then he looked again at the bed. The longing to lie down on it was irresistible. He pointed to the open door.

"When the sun comes will you wake me?" he said.

He took hold of his arm with one hand, and made the motion of shaking himself.

"Sole," he said. "Quando c'e il sole."

The girl laughed and nodded.

"Si, signore—non dubiti!"

Delarey climbed up on to the mountainous bed.

"Buona notte, Maddalena!" he said, smiling at her from the pillow like a boy.

"Buon riposo, signorino!"

That was the last thing he heard. The last thing he saw was the dark, eager face of the girl lit up by the candle-flame watching him from the farther room. Her slight figure was framed by the doorway, through which a faint, sad light was stealing with the soft wind from the sea. Her lustrous eyes were looking towards him curiously, as if he were something of a phenomenon, as if she longed to understand his mystery.

Soon, very soon, he saw those eyes no more. He was asleep in the midst of the Madonnas and the saints, with the blessed palm branch and the crucifix and Maria Addolorata above his head.

The girl sat down on a chair just outside the door, and began to sing to herself once more in a low voice:

"Divina Pruvidenza, pruvviditimi; Divina Pruvidenza, consulatimi; Divina Pruvidenza e granni assai; Cu' teni fidi a Diu, 'un pirisci mai!"

Once, in his sleep, Delarey must surely have heard her song, for he began to dream that he was Ulysses sailing across the purple seas along the shores of an enchanted coast, and that he heard far off the sirens singing, and saw their shadowy forms sitting among the rocks and reclining upon the yellow sands. Then he bade his mariners steer the bark towards the shore. But when he drew near the sirens changed into devout peasant women, and their alluring songs into prayers uttered to the Bambino and the Virgin. But one watched him with eyes that gleamed like black jewels, and her lips smiled while they uttered prayers, as if they could murmur love words and kiss the lips of men.

"Signorino! Signorino!"

Delarey stirred on the great, white bed. A hand grasped him firmly, shook him ruthlessly.

"Signorino! C'e il sole!"

He opened his eyes reluctantly. Maddalena was leaning over him. He saw her bright face and curious young eyes, then the faces of the saints and the actresses upon the wall, and he wondered where he was and where Hermione was.

"Hermione!" he said.

"Cosa?" said Maddalena.

She shook him again gently. He stretched himself, yawned, and began to smile. She smiled back at him.

"C'e il sole!"

Now he remembered, lifted himself up, and looked towards the doorway. The first rays of the sun were filtering in and sparkling in the distance upon the sea. The east was barred with red.

He slipped down from the bed.

"The frittura!" he said, in English. "I must make haste!"

Maddalena laughed. She had never heard English before.

"Ditelo ancora!" she cried, eagerly.

They went but together on to the plateau and stood looking seaward.

"I—must—make—haste!" he said, speaking slowly and dividing the words.

"Hi—maust—maiki—'ai—isti!" she repeated, trying to imitate his accent.

He burst out laughing. She pouted. Then she laughed, too, peal upon peal, while the sunlight grew stronger about them. How fresh the wind was! It played with her hair, from which she had now removed the handkerchief, and ruffled the little feathers of gold upon her brow. It blew about her smooth, young face as if it loved to touch the soft cheeks, the innocent lips, the candid, unlined brow. The leaves of the olive-trees rustled and the brambles and the grasses swayed. Everything was in movement, stirring gayly into life to greet the coming day. Maurice opened his mouth and drew in the air to his lungs, expanding his chest. He felt inclined to dance, to sing, and very much inclined to eat.

"Addio, Maddalena!" he said, holding out his hand.

He looked into her eyes and added:

"Addio, Maddalena mia!"

She smiled and looked down, then up at him again.

"A rivederci, signorino!"

She took his hand warmly in hers.

"Yes, that's better. A rivederci!"

He held her hand for a moment, looking into her long and laughing eyes, and thinking how like a young animal's they were in their unwinking candor. And yet they were not like an animal's. For now, when he gazed into them, they did not look away from him, but continued to regard him, and always with an eager shining of curiosity. That curiosity stirred his manhood, fired him. He longed to reply to it, to give a quick answer to its eager question, its "what are you?" He glanced round, saw only the trees, the sea all alight with sun-rays, the red east now changing slowly into gold. Then he bent down, kissed the lips of Maddalena with a laugh, turned and descended through the trees by the way he had come. He had no feeling that he had done any wrong to Hermione, any wrong to Maddalena. His spirits were high, and he sang as he leaped down, agile as a goat, to the sea. He meant to return as he had come, and at the water's edge he stripped off his clothes once more, tied them into a bundle, plunged into the sea, and struck out for the beach opposite. As he did so, as the cold, bracing water seized him, he heard far above him the musical cry of the siren of the night. He answered it with a loud, exultant call.

That was her farewell and his—this rustic Hero's good-bye to her Leander.

When he reached the Caffe Berardi its door stood open, and a middle-aged woman was looking out seaward. Beyond, by the caves, he saw figures moving. His companions were awake. He hastened towards them. His morning plunge in the sea had given him a wild appetite.

"Frittura! Frittura!" he shouted, taking off his hat and waving it.

Gaspare came running towards him.

"Where have you been, signorino?"

"For a walk along the shore."

He still kept his hat in his hand.

"Why, your face is all wet, and so is your hair."

"I washed them in the sea. Mangiamo! Mangiamo!"

"You did not sleep?"

Gaspare spoke curiously, regarded him with inquisitive, searching eyes.

"I couldn't. I'll sleep up there when we get home."

He pointed to the mountain. His eyes were dancing with gayety.

"The frittura, Gasparino, the frittura! And then the tarantella, and then 'O sole mio'!"

He looked towards the rising sun, and began to sing at the top of his voice:

"O sole, o sole mio, Sta 'n fronte a te, Sta 'n fronte a te!"

Gaspare joined in lustily, and Carmela in the doorway of the Caffe Berardi waved a frying-pan at them in time to the music.

"Per Dio, Gaspare!" exclaimed Maurice, as they raced towards the house, each striving to be first there—"Per Dio, I never knew what life was till I came to Sicily! I never knew what happiness was till this morning!"

"The frittura! The frittura!" shouted Gaspare. "I'll be first!"

Neck and neck they reached the caffe as Nito poured the shining fish into Madre Carmela's frying-pan.



VIII

"They are coming, signora, they are coming! Don't you hear them?"

Lucrezia was by the terrace wall looking over into the ravine. She could not see any moving figures, but she heard far down among the olives and the fruit trees Gaspare's voice singing "O sole mio!" and while she listened another voice joined in, the voice of the padrone:

"Dio mio, but they are merry!" she added, as the song was broken by a distant peal of laughter.

Hermione came out upon the steps. She had been in the sitting-room writing a letter to Miss Townly, who sent her long and tearful effusions from London almost every day.

"Have you got the frying-pan ready, Lucrezia?" she asked.

"The frying-pan, signora!"

"Yes, for the fish they are bringing us."

Lucrezia looked knowing.

"Oh, signora, they will bring no fish."

"Why not? They promised last night. Didn't you hear?"

"They promised, yes, but they won't remember. Men promise at night and forget in the morning."

Hermione laughed. She had been feeling a little dull, but now the sound of the lusty voices and the laughter from the ravine filled her with a sudden cheerfulness, and sent a glow of anticipation into her heart.

"Lucrezia, you are a cynic."

"What is a cinico, signora?"

"A Lucrezia. But you don't know your padrone. He won't forget us."

Lucrezia reddened. She feared she had perhaps said something that seemed disrespectful.

"Oh, signora, there is not another like the padrone. Every one says so. Ask Gaspare and Sebastiano. I only meant that—"

"I know. Well, to-day you will understand that all men are not forgetful, when you eat your fish."

Lucrezia still looked very doubtful, but she said nothing more.

"There they are!" exclaimed Hermione.

She waved her hand and cried out. Life suddenly seemed quite different to her. These moving figures peopled gloriously the desert waste, these ringing voices filled with music the brooding silence of it. She murmured to herself a verse of scripture, "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh with the morning," and she realized for the first time how absurdly sad and deserted she had been feeling, how unreasonably forlorn. By her present joy she measured her past—not sorrow exactly; she could not call it that—her past dreariness, and she said to herself with a little shock almost of fear, "How terribly dependent I am!"

"Mamma mia!" cried Lucrezia, as another shout of laughter came up from the ravine, "how merry and mad they are! They have had a good night's fishing."

Hermione heard the laughter, but now it sounded a little harsh in her ears.

"I wonder," she thought, as she leaned upon the terrace wall—"I wonder if he has missed me at all? I wonder if men ever miss us as we miss them?"

Her call, it seemed, had not been heard, nor her gesture of welcome seen, but now Maurice looked up, waved his cap, and shouted. Gaspare, too, took off his linen hat with a stentorian cry of "Buon giorno, signora."

"Signora!" said Lucrezia.

"Yes?"

"Look! Was not I right? Are they carrying anything?"

Hermione looked eagerly, almost passionately, at the two figures now drawing near to the last ascent up the bare mountain flank. Maurice had a stick in one hand, the other hung empty at his side. Gaspare still waved his hat wildly, holding it with both hands as a sailor holds the signalling-flag.

"Perhaps," she said—"perhaps it wasn't a good night, and they've caught nothing."

"Oh, signora, the sea was calm. They must have taken—"

"Perhaps their pockets are full of fish. I am sure they are."

She spoke with a cheerful assurance.

"If they have caught any fish, I know your frying-pan will be wanted," she said.

"Chi lo sa?" said Lucrezia, with rather perfunctory politeness.

Secretly she thought that the padrona had only one fault. She was a little obstinate sometimes, and disinclined to be told the truth. And certainly she did not know very much about men, although she had a husband.

Through the old Norman arch came Delarey and Gaspare, with hot faces and gay, shining eyes, splendidly tired with their exertions and happy in the thought of rest. Delarey took Hermione's hand in his. He would have kissed her before Lucrezia and Gaspare, quite naturally, but he felt that her hand stiffened slightly in his as he leaned forward, and he forbore. She longed for his kiss, but to receive it there would have spoiled a joy. And kind and familiar though she was with those beneath her, she could not bear to show the deeps of her heart before them. To her his kiss after her lonely night would be an event. Did he know that? She wondered.

He still kept her hand in his as he began to tell her about their expedition.

"Did you enjoy it?" she asked, thinking what a boy he looked in his eager, physical happiness.

"Ask Gaspare!"

"I don't think I need. Your eyes tell me."

"I never enjoyed any night so much before, out there under the moon. Why don't we always sleep out-of-doors?"

"Shall we try some night on the terrace?"

"By Jove, we will! What a lark!"

"Did you go into the sea?"

"I should think so! Ask Gaspare if I didn't beat them all. I had to swim, too."

"And the fish?" she said, trying to speak, carelessly.

"They were stunning. We caught an awful lot, and Mother Carmela cooked them to a T. I had an appetite, I can tell you, Hermione, after being in the sea."

She was silent for a moment. Her hand had dropped out of his. When she spoke again, she said:

"And you slept in the caves?"

"The others did."

"And you?"

"I couldn't sleep, so I went out on to the beach. But I'll tell you all that presently. You won't be shocked, Hermione, if I take a siesta now? I'm pretty well done—grandly tired, don't you know. I think I could get a lovely nap before collazione."

"Come in, my dearest," she said. "Collazione a little late, Lucrezia, not till half-past one."

"And the fish, signora?" asked Lucrezia.

"We've got quite enough without fish," said Hermione, turning away.

"Oh, by Jove!" Delarey said, as they went into the cottage, putting his hand into his jacket-pocket, "I've got something for you, Hermione."

"Fish!" she cried, eagerly, her whole face brightening. "Lucre—"

"Fish in my coat!" he interrupted, still not remembering. "No, a letter. They gave it me from the village as we came up. Here it is."

He drew out a letter, gave it to her, and went into the bedroom, while Hermione stood in the sitting-room by the dining-table with the letter in her hand.

It was from Artois, with the Kairouan postmark.

"It's from Emile," she said.

Maurice was closing the shutters, to make the bedroom dark.

"Is he still in Africa?" he asked, letting down the bar with a clatter.

"Yes," she said, opening the envelope. "Go to bed like a good boy while I read it."

She wanted his kiss so much that she did not go near to him, and spoke with a lightness that was almost like a feigned indifference. He thrust his gay face through the doorway into the sunshine, and she saw the beads of perspiration on his smooth brow above his laughing, yet half-sleepy eyes.

"Come and tuck me up afterwards!" he said, and vanished.

Hermione made a little movement as if to follow him, but checked it and unfolded the letter.

"4, RUE D'ABDUL KADER, KAIROUAN.

MY DEAR FRIEND,—This will be one of my dreary notes, but you must forgive me. Do you ever feel a heavy cloud of apprehension lowering over you, a sensation of approaching calamity, as if you heard the footsteps of a deadly enemy stealthily approaching you? Do you know what it is to lose courage, to fear yourself, life, the future, to long to hear a word of sympathy from a friendly voice, to long to lay hold of a friendly hand? Are you ever like a child in the dark, your intellect no weapon against the dread of formless things? The African sun is shining here as I sit under a palm-tree writing, with my servant, Zerzour, squatting beside me. It is so clear that I can almost count the veins in the leaves of the palms, so warm that Zerzour has thrown off his burnous and kept on only his linen shirt. And yet I am cold and seem to be in blackness. I write to you to gain some courage if I can. But I have gained none yet. I believe there must be a physical cause for my malaise, and that I am going to have some dreadful illness, and perhaps lay my bones here in the shadow of the mosques among the sons of Islam. Write to me. Is the garden of paradise blooming with flowers? Is the tree of knowledge of good weighed down with fruit, and do you pluck the fruit boldly and eat it every day? You told me in London to come over and see you. I am not coming. Do not fear. But how I wish that I could now, at this instant, see your strong face, touch your courageous hand! There is a sensation of doom upon me. Laugh at me as much as you like, but write to me. I feel cold—cold in the sun.

EMILE."

When she had finished reading this letter, Hermione stood quite still with it in her hand, gazing at the white paper on which this cry from Africa was traced. It seemed to her that—a cry from across the sea for help against some impending fate. She had often had melancholy letters from Artois in the past, expressing pessimistic views about life and literature, anxiety about some book which he was writing and which he thought was going to be a failure, anger against the follies of men, the turn of French politics, or the degeneration of the arts in modern times. Diatribes she was accustomed to, and a definite melancholy from one who had not a gay temperament. But this letter was different from all the others. She sat down and read it again. For the moment she had forgotten Maurice, and did not hear his movements in the adjoining room. She was in Africa under a palm-tree, looking into the face of a friend with keen anxiety, trying to read the immediate future for him there.

"Maurice!" she called, presently, without getting up from her seat, "I've had such a strange letter from Emile. I'm afraid—I feel as if he were going to be dreadfully ill or have an accident."

There was no reply.

"Maurice!" she called again.

Then she got up and looked into the bedroom. It was nearly dark, but she could see her husband's black head on the pillow and hear a sound of regular breathing. He was asleep already; she had not received his kiss or tucked him up. She felt absurdly unhappy, as if she had missed a pleasure that could never come to her again. That, she thought, is one of the penalties of a great love, the passionate regret it spends on the tiny things it has failed of. At this moment she fancied—no, she felt sure—that there would always be a shadow in her life. She had lost Maurice's kiss after his return from his first absence since their marriage. And a kiss from his lips still seemed to her a wonderful, almost a sacred thing, not only a physical act, but an emblem of that which was mysterious and lay behind the physical. Why had she not let him kiss her on the terrace? Her sensitive reserve had made her loss. For a moment she thought she wished she had the careless mind of a peasant. Lucrezia loved Sebastiano with passion, but she would have let him kiss her in public and been proud of it. What was the use of delicacy, of sensitiveness, in the great, coarse thing called life? Even Maurice had not shared her feeling. He was open as a boy, almost as a peasant boy.

She began to wonder about him. She often wondered about him now in Sicily. In England she never had. She had thought there that she knew him as he, perhaps, could never know her. It seemed to her that she had been almost arrogant, filled with a pride of intellect. She was beginning to be humbler here, face to face with Etna.

Let him sleep, mystery wrapped in the mystery of slumber!

She sat down in the twilight, waiting till he should wake, watching the darkness of his hair upon the pillow.

Some time passed, and presently she heard a noise upon the terrace. She got up softly, went into the sitting-room, and looked out. Lucrezia was laying the table for collazione.

"Is it half-past one already?" she asked.

"Si, signora."

"But the padrone is still asleep!"

"So is Gaspare in the hay. Come and see, signora."

Lucrezia took Hermione by the hand and led her round the angle of the cottage. There, under the low roof of the out-house, dressed only in his shirt and trousers with his brown arms bare and his hair tumbled over his damp forehead, lay Gaspare on a heap of hay close to Tito, the donkey. Some hens were tripping and pecking by his legs, and a black cat was curled up in the hollow of his left armpit. He looked infinitely young, healthy, and comfortable, like an embodied carelessness that had flung itself down to its need.

"I wish I could sleep like that," said Hermione.

"Signora!" said Lucrezia, shocked. "You in the stable with that white dress! Mamma mia! And the hens!"

"Hens, donkey, cat, hay, and all—I should love it. But I'm too old ever to sleep like that. Don't wake him!"

Lucrezia was stepping over to Gaspare.

"And I won't wake the padrone. Let them both sleep. They've been up all night. I'll eat alone. When they wake we'll manage something for them. Perhaps they'll sleep till evening, till dinner-time."

"Gaspare will, signora. He can sleep the clock round when he's tired."

"And the padrone too, I dare say. All the better."

She spoke cheerfully, then went to sit down to her solitary meal.

The letter of Artois was her only company. She read it again as she ate, and again felt as if it had been written by a man over whom some real misfortune was impending. The thought of his isolation in that remote African city pained her warm heart. She compared it with her own momentary solitude, and chided herself for minding—and she did mind—the lonely meal. How much she had—everything almost! And Artois, with his genius, his fame, his liberty—how little he had! An Arab servant for his companion, while she for hers had Maurice! Her heart glowed with thankfulness, and, feeling how rich she was, she felt a longing to give to others—a longing to make every one happy, a longing specially to make Emile happy. His letter was horribly sad. Each time she looked at it she was made sad by it, even apprehensive. She remembered their long and close friendship, how she had sympathized with all his struggles, how she had been proud of possessing his confidence and of being asked to advise him on points connected with his work. The past returned to her, kindling fires in her heart, till she longed to be near him and to shed their warmth on him. The African sun shone upon him and left him cold, numb. How wonderful it was, she thought, that the touch of a true friend's hand, the smile of the eyes of a friend, could succeed where the sun failed. Sometimes she thought of herself, of all human beings, as pygmies. Now she felt that she came of a race of giants, whose powers were illimitable. If only she could be under that palm-tree for a moment beside Emile, she would be able to test the power she knew was within her, the glorious power that the sun lacked, to shed light and heat through a human soul. With an instinctive gesture she stretched out her hand as if to give Artois the touch he longed for. It encountered only the air and dropped to her side. She got up with a sigh.

"Poor old Emile!" she said to herself. "If only I could do something for him!"

The thought of Maurice sleeping calmly close to her made her long to say "Thank you" for her great happiness by performing some action of usefulness, some action that would help another—Emile for choice—to happiness, or, at least, to calm.

This longing was for a moment so keen in her that it was almost like an unconscious petition, like an unuttered prayer in the heart, "Give me an opportunity to show my gratitude."

She stood by the wall for a moment, looking over into the ravine and at the mountain flank opposite. Etna was startlingly clear to-day. She fancied that if a fly were to settle upon the snow on its summit she would be able to see it. The sea was like a mirror in which lay the reflection of the unclouded sky. It was not far to Africa. She watched a bird pass towards the sea. Perhaps it was flying to Kairouan, and would settle at last on one of the white cupolas of the great mosque there, the Mosque of Djama Kebir.

What could she do for Emile? She could at least write to him. She could renew her invitation to him to come to Sicily.

"Lucrezia!" she called, softly, lest she might waken Maurice.

"Signora?" said Lucrezia, appearing round the corner of the cottage.

"Please bring me out a pen and ink and writing-paper, will you?"

"Si, signora."

Lucrezia was standing beside Hermione. Now she turned to go into the house. As she did so she said:

"Ecco, Antonino from the post-office!"

"Where?" asked Hermione.

Lucrezia pointed to a little figure that was moving quickly along the mountain-path towards the cottage.

"There, signora. But why should he come? It is not the hour for the post yet."

"No. Perhaps it is a telegram. Yes, it must be a telegram."

She glanced at the letter in her hand.

"It's a telegram from Africa," she said, as if she knew.

And at that moment she felt that she did know.

Lucrezia regarded her with round-eyed amazement.

"But, signora, how can you—"

"There, Antonino has disappeared under the trees! We shall see him in a minute among the rocks. I'll go to meet him."

And she went quickly to the archway, and looked down the path where the lizards were darting to and fro in the sunshine. Almost directly Antonino reappeared, a small boy climbing steadily up the steep pathway, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder.

"Antonino!" she called to him. "Is it a telegram?"

"Si, signora!" he cried out.

He came up to her, panting, opened the bag, and gave her the folded paper.

"Go and get something to drink," she said. "To eat, too, if you're hungry."

Antonino ran off eagerly, while Hermione tore open the paper and read these words in French:

"Monsieur Artois dangerously ill; fear may not recover; he wished you to know.

MAX BERTON, Docteur Medecin, Kairouan."

Hermione dropped the telegram. She did not feel at all surprised. Indeed, she felt that she had been expecting almost these very words, telling her of a tragedy at which the letter she still held in her hand had hinted. For a moment she stood there without being conscious of any special sensation. Then she stooped, picked up the telegram, and read it again. This time it seemed like an answer to that unuttered prayer in her heart: "Give me an opportunity to show my gratitude." She did not hesitate for a moment as to what she would do. She would go to Kairouan, to close the eyes of her friend if he must die, if not to nurse him back to life.

Antonino was munching some bread and cheese and had one hand round a glass full of red wine.

"I'm going to write an answer," she said to him, "and you must run with it."

"Si, signora."

"Was it from Africa, signora?" asked Lucrezia.

"Yes."

Lucrezia's jaw fell, and she stared in superstitious amazement.

"I wonder," Hermione thought, "if Maurice—"

She went gently to the bedroom. He was still sleeping calmly. His attitude of luxurious repose, the sound of his quiet breathing, seemed strange to her eyes and ears at this moment, strange and almost horrible. For an instant she thought of waking him in order to tell him her news and consult with him about the journey. It never occurred to her to ask him whether there should be a journey. But something held her back, as one is held back from disturbing the slumber of a tired child, and she returned to the sitting-room, wrote out the following telegram:

"Shall start for Kairouan at once; wire me Tunisia Palace Hotel, Tunis, MADAME DELAREY."

and sent Antonino with it flying down the hill. Then she got time-tables and a guide-book of Tunisia, and sat down at her writing-table to make out the journey; while Lucrezia, conscious that something unusual was afoot, watched her with solemn eyes.

Hermione found that she would gain nothing by starting that night. By leaving early the next morning she would arrive at Trapani in time to catch a steamer which left at midnight for Tunis, reaching Africa at nine on the following morning. From Tunis a day's journey by train would bring her to Kairouan. If the steamer were punctual she might be able to catch a train immediately on her arrival at Tunis. If not, she would have to spend one day there.

Already she felt as if she were travelling. All sense of peace had left her. She seemed to hear the shriek of engines, the roar of trains in tunnels and under bridges, to shake with the oscillation of the carriage, to sway with the dip and rise of the action of the steamer.

Swiftly, as one in haste, she wrote down times of departure and arrival: Cattaro to Messina, Messina to Palermo, Palermo to Trapani, Trapani to Tunis, Tunis to Kairouan, with the price of the ticket—a return ticket. When that was done and she had laid down her pen, she began for the first time to realize the change a morsel of paper had made in her life, to realize the fact of the closeness of her new knowledge of what was and what was coming to Maurice's ignorance. The travelling sensation within her, an intense interior restlessness, made her long for action, for some ardent occupation in which the body could take part. She would have liked to begin at once to pack, but all her things were in the bedroom where Maurice was sleeping. Would he sleep forever? She longed for him to wake, but she would not wake him. Everything could be packed in an hour. There was no reason to begin now. But how could she remain just sitting there in the great tranquillity of this afternoon of spring, looking at the long, calm line of Etna rising from the sea, while Emile, perhaps, lay dying?

She got up, went once more to the terrace, and began to pace up and down under the awning. She had not told Lucrezia that she was going on the morrow. Maurice must know first. What would he say? How would he take it? And what would he do? Even in the midst of her now growing sorrow—for at first she had hardly felt sorry, had hardly felt anything but that intense restlessness which still possessed her—she was preoccupied with that. She meant, when he woke, to give him the telegram, and say simply that she must go at once to Artois. That was all. She would not ask, hint at anything else. She would just tell Maurice that she could not leave her dearest friend to die alone in an African city, tended only by an Arab, and a doctor who came to earn his fee.

And Maurice—what would he say? What would he—do?

If only he would wake! There was something terrible to her in the contrast between his condition and hers at this moment.

And what ought she to do if Maurice—?

She broke off short in her mental arrangement of possible happenings when Maurice should wake.

The afternoon waned and still he slept. As she watched the light changing on the sea, growing softer, more wistful, and the long outline of Etna becoming darker against the sky, Hermione felt a sort of unreasonable despair taking possession of her. So few hours of the day were left now, and on the morrow this Sicilian life—a life that had been ideal—must come to an end for a time, and perhaps forever. The abruptness of the blow which had fallen had wakened in her sensitive heart a painful, almost an exaggerated sense of the uncertainty of the human fate. It seemed to her that the joy which had been hers in these tranquil Sicilian days, a joy more perfect than any she had conceived of, was being broken off short, as if it could never be renewed. With her anxiety for her friend mingled another anxiety, more formless, but black and horrible in its vagueness.

"If this should be our last day together in Sicily!" she thought, as she watched the light softening among the hills and the shadows of the olive-trees lengthening upon the ground.

"If this should be our last night together in the house of the priest!"

It seemed to her that even with Maurice in another place she could never know again such perfect peace and joy, and her heart ached at the thought of leaving it.

"To-morrow!" she thought. "Only a few hours and this will all be over!"

It seemed almost incredible. She felt that she could not realize it thoroughly and yet that she realized it too much, as in a nightmare one seems to feel both less and more than in any tragedy of a wakeful hour.

A few hours and it would all be over—and through those hours Maurice slept.

The twilight was falling when he stirred, muttered some broken words, and opened his eyes. He heard no sound, and thought it was early morning.

"Hermione!" he said, softly.

Then he lay still for a moment and remembered.

"By Jove! it must be long past time for dejeuner!" he thought.

He sprang up and put his head into the sitting-room.

"Hermione!" he called.

"Yes," she answered, from the terrace.

"What's the time?"

"Nearly dinner-time."

He burst out laughing.

"Didn't you think I was going to sleep forever?" he said.

"Almost," her voice said.

He wondered a little why she did not come to him, but only answered him from a distance.

"I'll dress and be out in a moment," he called.

"All right!"

Now that Maurice was awake at last, Hermione's grief at the lost afternoon became much more acute, but she was determined to conceal it. She remained where she was just then because she had been startled by the sound of her husband's voice, and was not sure of her power of self-control. When, a few minutes later, he came out upon the terrace with a half-amused, half-apologetic look on his face, she felt safer. She resolved to waste no time, but to tell him at once.

"Maurice," she said, "while you've been sleeping I've been living very fast and travelling very far."

"How, Hermione? What do you mean?" he asked, sitting down by the wall and looking at her with eyes that still held shadows of sleep.

"Something's happened to-day that's—that's going to alter everything."

He looked astonished.

"Why, how grave you are! But what? What could happen here?"

"This came."

She gave him the doctor's telegram. He read it slowly aloud.

"Artois!" he said. "Poor fellow! And out there in Africa all alone!"

He stopped speaking, looked at her, then leaned forward, put his arm round her shoulder, and kissed her gently.

"I'm awfully sorry for you, Hermione," he said. "Awfully sorry, I know how you must be feeling. When did it come?"

"Some hours ago."

"And I've been sleeping! I feel a brute."

He kissed her again.

"Why didn't you wake me?"

"Just to share a grief? That would have been horrid of me, Maurice!"

He looked again at the telegram.

"Did you wire?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Of course. Perhaps to-morrow, or in a day or two, we shall have better news, that he's turned the corner. He's a strong man, Hermione; he ought to recover. I believe he'll recover."

"Maurice," she said. "I want to tell you something."

"What, dear?"

"I feel I must—I can't wait here for news."

"But then—what will you do?"

"While you've been sleeping I've been looking out trains."

"Trains! You don't mean—"

"I must start for Kairouan to-morrow morning. Read this, too."

And she gave him Emile's letter.

"Doesn't that make you feel his loneliness?" she said, when he had finished it. "And think of it now—now when perhaps he knows that he is dying."

"You are going away," he said—"going away from here!"

His voice sounded as if he could not believe it.

"To-morrow morning!" he added, more incredulously.

"If I waited I might be too late."

She was watching him with intent eyes, in which there seemed to flame a great anxiety.

"You know what friends we've been," she continued. "Don't you think I ought to go?"

"I—perhaps—yes, I see how you feel. Yes, I see. But"—he got up—"to leave here to-morrow! I felt as if—almost as if we'd been here always and should live here for the rest of our lives."

"I wish to Heaven we could!" she exclaimed, her voice changing. "Oh, Maurice, if you knew how dreadful it is to me to go!"

"How far is Kairouan?"

"If I catch the train at Tunis I can be there the day after to-morrow."

"And you are going to nurse him, of course?"

"Yes, if—if I'm in time. Now I ought to pack before dinner."

"How beastly!" he said, just like a boy. "How utterly beastly! I don't feel as if I could believe it all. But you—what a trump you are, Hermione! To leave this and travel all that way—not one woman in a hundred would do it."

"Wouldn't you for a friend?"

"I!" he said, simply. "I don't know whether I understand friendship as you do. I've had lots of friends, of course, but one seemed to me very like another, as long as they were jolly."

"How Sicilian!" she thought.

She had heard Gaspare speak of his boy friends in much the same way.

"Emile is more to me than any one in the world but you," she said.

Her voice changed, faltered on the last word, and she walked along the terrace to the sitting-room window.

"I must pack now," she said. "Then we can have one more quiet time together after dinner."

Her last words seemed to strike him, for he followed her, and as she was going into the bedroom, he said:

"Perhaps—why shouldn't I—"

But then he stopped.

"Yes, Maurice!" she said, quickly.

"Where's Gaspare?" he asked. "We'll make him help with the packing. But you won't take much, will you? It'll only be for a few days, I suppose."

"Who knows?"

"Gaspare! Gaspare!" he called.

"Che vuole?" answered a sleepy voice.

"Come here."

In a moment a languid figure appeared round the corner. Maurice explained matters. Instantly Gaspare became a thing of quicksilver. He darted to help Hermione. Every nerve seemed quivering to be useful.

"And the signore?" he said, presently, as he carried a trunk into the room.

"The signore!" said Hermione.

"Is he going, too?"

"No, no!" said Hermione, swiftly.

She put her finger to her lips. Delarey was just coming into the room.

Gaspare said no more, but he shot a curious glance from padrona to padrone as he knelt down to lay some things in the trunk.

By dinner-time Hermione's preparations were completed. The one trunk she meant to take was packed. How hateful it looked standing there in the white room with the label hanging from the handle! She washed her face and hands in cold water, and came out onto the terrace where the dinner-table was laid. It was a warm, still night, like the night of the fishing, and the moon hung low in a clear sky.

"How exquisite it is here!" she said to Maurice, as they sat down. "We are in the very heart of calm, majestic calm. Look at that one star over Etna, and the outlines of the hills and of that old castle—"

She stopped.

"It brings a lump into my throat," she said, after a little pause. "It's too beautiful and too still to-night."

"I love being here," he said.

They ate their dinner in silence for some time. Presently Maurice began to crumble his bread.

"Hermione," he said. "Look here—"

"Yes, Maurice."

"I've been thinking—of course I scarcely know Artois, and I could be of no earthly use, but I've been thinking whether it would not be better for me to come to Kairouan with you."

For a moment Hermione's rugged face was lit up by a fire of joy that made her look beautiful. Maurice went on crumbling his bread.

"I didn't say anything at first," he continued, "because I—well, somehow I felt so fixed here, almost part of the place, and I had never thought of going till it got too hot, and especially not now, when the best time is only just beginning. And then it all came so suddenly. I was still more than half asleep, too, I believe," he added, with a little laugh, "when you told me. But now I've had time, and—why shouldn't I come, too, to look after you?"

As he went on speaking the light in Hermione's face flickered and died out. It was when he laughed that it vanished quite away.

"Thank you, Maurice," she said, quietly. "Thank you, dear. I should love to have you with me, but it would be a shame!"

"Why?"

"Why? Why—the best time here is only just beginning, as you say. It would be selfish to drag you across the sea to a sick-bed, or perhaps to a death-bed."

"But the journey?"

"Oh, I am accustomed to being a lonely woman. Think how short a time we've been married! I've nearly always travelled alone."

"Yes, I know," he said. "Of course there's no danger. I didn't mean that, only—"

"Only you were ready to be unselfish," she said. "Bless you for it. But this time I want to be unselfish. You must stay here to keep house, and I'll come back the first moment I can—the very first. Let's try to think of that—of the day when I come up the mountain again to my—to our garden of paradise. All the time I'm away I shall pray for the moment when I see these columns of the terrace above me, and the geraniums, and—and the white wall of our little—home."

She stopped. Then she added:

"And you."

"Yes," he said. "But you won't see me on the terrace."

"Why not?"

"Because, of course, I shall come to the station to meet you. That day will be a festa."

She said nothing more. Her heart was very full, and of conflicting feelings and of voices that spoke in contradiction one of another. One or two of these voices she longed to hush to silence, but they were persistent. Then she tried not to listen to what they were saying. But they were pitilessly distinct.

Dinner was soon over, and Gaspare came to clear away. His face was very grave, even troubled. He did not like this abrupt departure of his padrona.

"You will come back, signora?" he said, as he drew away the cloth and prepared to fold up the table and carry it in-doors.

Hermione managed to laugh.

"Why, of course, Gaspare! Did you think I was going away forever?"

"Africa is a long way off."

"Only nine hours from Trapani. I may be back very soon. Will you forget me?"

"Did I forget my padrona when she was in England?" the boy replied, his expressive face suddenly hardening and his great eyes glittering with sullen fires.

Hermione quickly laid her hand on his.

"I was only laughing. You know your padrona trusts you to remember her as she remembers you."

Gaspare lifted up her hand quickly, kissed it, and hurried away, lifting his own hand to his eyes.

"These Sicilians know how to make one love them," said Hermione, with a little catch in her voice. "I believe that boy would die for me if necessary."

"I'm sure he would," said Maurice. "But one doesn't find a padrona like you every day."

"Let us walk to the arch," she said. "I must take my last look at the mountains with you."

Beyond the archway there was a large, flat rock, a natural seat from which could be seen a range of mountains that was invisible from the terrace. Hermione often sat on this rock alone, looking at the distant peaks, whose outlines stirred her imagination like a wild and barbarous music. Now she drew down Maurice beside her and kept his hand in hers. She was thinking of many things, among others of the little episode that had just taken place with Gaspare. His outburst of feeling, like fire bursting up through a suddenly opened fissure in the crust of the earth, had touched her and something more. It had comforted her, and removed from her a shadowy figure that had been approaching her, the figure of a fear. She fixed her eyes on the mountains, dark under the silver of the moon.