heard calling from the
terrace, with the peculiar baaing intonation that is characteristic of
southern women of the lower classes.

Gaspare baaed ironically in reply.

"It isn't dinner-time already?" said Maurice, getting up reluctantly.

"Yes, meester sir, eef you pleesi," said Gaspare, with conscious pride.
"We go way."

"Bravo. Well, I'm getting hungry."

As Maurice sat alone at dinner on the terrace, while Gaspare and Lucrezia
ate and chattered in the kitchen, he saw presently far down below the
shining of the light in the house of the sirens. It came out when the
stars came out, this tiny star of the sea. He felt a little lonely as he
sat there eating all by himself, and when the light was kindled near the
water, that lay like a dream waiting to be sweetly disturbed by the moon,
he was pleased as by the greeting of a friend. The light was company. He
watched it while he ate. It was a friendly light, more friendly than the
light of the stars to him. For he connected it with earthly
things--things a man could understand. He imagined Maddalena in the
cottage where he had slept preparing the supper for Salvatore, who was
presently going off to sea to spear fish, or net them, or take them with
lines for the market on the morrow. There was bread and cheese on the
table, and the good red wine that could harm nobody, wine that had all
the laughter of the sun-rays in it. And the cottage door was open to the
sea. The breeze came in and made the little lamp that burned beneath the
Madonna flicker. He saw the big, white bed, and the faces of the saints,
of the actresses, of the smiling babies that had watched him while he
slept. And he saw the face of his peasant hostess, the face he had kissed
in the dawn, ere he ran down among the olive-trees to plunge into the
sea. He saw the eyes that were like black jewels, the little feathers of
gold in the hair about her brow. She was a pretty, simple girl. He liked
the look of curiosity in her eyes. To her he was something touched with
wonder, a man from a far-off land. Yet she was at ease with him and he
with her. That drop of Sicilian blood in his veins was worth something to
him in this isle of the south. It made him one with so much, with the
sunburned sons of the hills and of the sea-shore, with the sunburned
daughters of the soil. It made him one with them--or more--one of them.
He had had a kiss from Sicily now--a kiss in the dawn by the sea, from
lips fresh with the sea wi