Lucrezia began to darn.

"His father, Chinetti Urbano, wishes him to marry at once. It is better

for a man."

"You understand men, Lucrezia?"

"Si, signora. They are all alike."

"And what are they like?"

"Oh, signora, you know as well as I do. They must have their own way and

we must not think to have ours. They must roam where they like, love

where they choose, day or night, and we must sit in the doorway and get

to bed at dark, and not bother where they've been or what they've done.

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They say we've no right, except one or two. There's Francesco, to be

sure. He's a lamb with Maria. She can sit with her face to the street.

But she wouldn't sit any other way, and he knows it. But the rest! Eh,

già!"

"You don't think much of men, Lucrezia!"

"Oh, signora, they're just as God made them. They can't help it any more

than we can help--"

She stopped and pursed her lips suddenly, as if checking some words that

were almost on them.

"Lucrezia, come here and sit by me."

Lucrezia looked up with a sort of doubtful pleasure and surprise.

"Signora?"

"Come here."

Lucrezia got up and came slowly to the seat by the ravine. Hermione took

her hand.

"You like Sebastiano very much, don't you?"

Lucrezia hung her head.

"Si, signora," she whispered.

"Do you think he'd be good to a woman if she loved him?"

"I shouldn't care. Bad or good, I'd--I'd--"

Suddenly, with a sort of childish violence, she put her two hands on

Hermione's arms.

"I want Sebastiano, signora; I want him!" she cried. "I've prayed to the

Madonna della Rocca to give him to me; all last year I've prayed, and

this. D'you think the Madonna's going to do it? Do you? Do you?"

Heat came out of her two hands, and heat flashed in her eyes. Her broad

bosom heaved, and her lips, still parted when she had done speaking,

seemed to interrogate Hermione fiercely in the silence. Before Hermione

could reply two sounds came to them: from below in the ravine the distant

drone of the ceramella, from above on the mountain-top the dry crack of a

pistol-shot.

Swiftly Lucrezia turned and looked downward, but Hermione looked upward

towards the bare flank that rose behind the cottage.

"It's Sebastiano, signora."

The ceramella droned on, moving slowly with its player on the hidden path

beneath the olive-trees.




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