"This sun's made me mad, I think," he said, looking at her. "Why, how
pale you are, Hermione!"
"Am I? No, it must be the shadow of the awning makes me look so. Oh,
Maurice, you are indeed a southerner! Do you know, I feel--I feel as if I
had never really seen you till now, here on this terrace, as if I had
never known you as you are till now, now that I've watched you dance the
tarantella."
"I can't dance it, of course. It was absurd of me to try."
"Ask Gaspare! No, I'll ask him. Gaspare, can the padrone dance the
tarantella?"
"Eh--altro!" said Gaspare, with admiring conviction.
He got off Giuseppe's knee, where he had been curled up almost like a big
kitten, came and stood by Hermione, and added: "Per Dio, signora, but the padrone is like one of us!"
Hermione laughed. Now that the dance was over and the twittering flute
was silent, her sense of loneliness and melancholy was departing. Soon,
no doubt, she would be able to look back upon it and laugh at it as one
laughs at moods that have passed away.
"This is his first day in Sicily, Gaspare."
"There are forestieri who come here every year, and who stay for months,
and who can talk our language--yes, and can even swear in dialetto as we
can--but they are not like the padrone. Not one of them could dance the
tarantella like that. Per Dio!"
A radiant look of pleasure came into Maurice's face.
"I'm glad you've brought me here," he said. "Ah, when you chose this
place for our honeymoon you understood me better than I understand
myself, Hermione."
"Did I?" she said, slowly. "But no, Maurice, I think I chose a little
selfishly. I was thinking of what I wanted. Oh, the boys are going, and
Sebastiano."
That evening, when they had finished supper--they did not wish to test
Lucrezia's powers too severely by dining the first day--they came out
onto the terrace. Lucrezia and Gaspare were busily talking in the
kitchen. Tito, the donkey, was munching his hay under the low-pitched
roof of the out-house. Now and then they could faintly hear the sound of
his moving jaws, Lucrezia's laughter, or Gaspare's eager voice. These
fragmentary noises scarcely disturbed the great silence that lay about
them, the night hush of the mountains and the sea. Hermione sat down on
the seat in the terrace wall looking over the ravine. It was a moonless
night, but the sky was clear and spangled with stars. There was a cool
breeze blowing from Etna. Here and there upon the mountains shone
solitary lights, and one was moving slowly through the darkness along the
crest of a hill opposite to them, a torch carried by some peasant going
to his hidden cottage among the olive-trees.