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
count