race.

And at that moment, for the first time in her life, she was conscious of
a little stab of pain such as she had never known before. It was pain of
the mind and of the heart, and yet it was like bodily pain, too. It made
her angry with herself. It was like a betrayal, a betrayal of herself by
her own intellect, she thought.

She stopped once more on the mountain-side.

"Am I going to be ridiculous?" she said to herself. "Am I going to be one
of the women I despise?"

Just then she realized that love may become a tyrant, ministering to the
soul with persecutions.

VI

Sebastiano took his arm from Lucrezia's waist as Hermione came down to
the terrace, and said:

"Buona sera, signora. Is the signore coming down yet?"

He flung out his arm towards the mountain.

"I don't know, Sebastiano. Why?"

"I've come with a message for him."

"Not for Lucrezia?"

Sebastiano laughed boldly, but Lucrezia, blushing red, disappeared into
the kitchen.

"Don't play with her, Sebastiano," said Hermione. "She's a good girl."

"I know that, signora."

"She deserves to be well treated."

Sebastiano went over to the terrace wall, looked into the ravine, turned
round, and came back.

"Who's treating Lucrezia badly, signora?"

"I did not say anybody was."

"The girls in Marechiaro can take care of themselves, signora. You don't
know them as I do."

"D'you think any woman can take care of herself, Sebastiano?"

He looked into her face and laughed, but said nothing. Hermione sat down.
She had a desire to-day, after Lucrezia's conversation with her, to get
at the Sicilian man's point of view in regard to women.

"Don't you think women want to be protected?" she asked.

"What from, signora?"

There was still laughter in his eyes.

"Not from us, anyway," he added. "Lucrezia there--she wants me for her
husband. All Marechiaro knows it."

Hermione felt that under the circumstances it was useless to blush for
Lucrezia, useless to meet blatant frankness with sensitive delicacy.

"Do you want Lucrezia for your wife?" she said.

"Well, signora, I'm strong. A stick or a knife in my hand and no man can
touch me. You've never seen me do the scherma con coltello? One day I'll
show you with Gaspare. And I can play better even than the men from
Bronte on the ceramella. You've heard me. Lucrezia knows I can have any
girl I like."

There was a simplicity in his immense superiority to women that robbed it
of offensiven