"Of course I do. I want to know Salvatore. Come along. We'll take his
boat one day and go out fishing."
Gaspare's grave face relaxed in a sly smile.
"Signorino!" he said, shaking his hand to and fro close to his nose.
"Birbante!"
There was a world of meaning in his voice. Maurice laughed joyously. He
began to feel like an ingenious school-boy who was going to have a lark.
There was neither thought of evil nor even a secret stirring of desire
for it in him.
"A rivederci, Lucrezia!" he cried.
And they set off.
When they were not far from the sea, Gaspare said: "Signorino, why do you like to come here? What is the good of it?"
They had been walking in silence. Evidently these questions were the
result of a process of thought which had been going on in the boy's mind.
"The good!" said Maurice. "What is the harm?"
"Well, here in Sicily, when a man goes to see a girl it is because he
wants to love her."
"In England it is different, Gaspare. In England men and women can be
friends. Why not?"
"You want just to be a friend of Maddalena?"
"Of course. I like to talk to the people. I want to understand them. Why
shouldn't I be friends with Maddalena as--as I am with Lucrezia?"
"Oh, Lucrezia is your servant."
"It's all the same."
"But perhaps Maddalena doesn't know. We are Sicilians here, signore."
"What do you mean? That Maddalena might--nonsense, Gaspare!"
There was a sound as of sudden pleasure, even sudden triumph, in his
voice.
"Are you sure you understand our girls, signore?"
"If Maddalena does like me there's no harm in it. She knows who I am now.
She knows I--she knows there is the signora."
"Si, signore. There is the signora. She is in Africa, but she is coming
back."
"Of course!"
"When the sick signore gets well?"
Maurice said nothing. He felt sure Gaspare was wondering again, wondering
that Hermione was in Africa.
"I cannot understand how it is in England," continued the boy. "Here it
is all quite different."
Again jealousy stirred in Maurice and a sensation almost of shame. For a
moment he felt like a Sicilian husband at whom his neighbors point the
two fingers of scorn, and he said something in his wrath which was
unworthy.
"You see how it is," he said. "If the signora can go to Africa to see her
friend, I can come down here to see mine. That is how it is with the
English."