was looking openly voracious now.

"I can sleep on the floor."

"No, signore. We have beds, we have two fine beds. Come in and see."

With not a little pride he led Maurice into the cottage, and showed him
the bed on which he had already slept.

"That will be for the signore, Gaspare."

"Si--e molto bello."

"Maddalena and I--we will sleep in the outer room."

"And I, Salvatore?" demanded the boy.

"You! Do you stay too?"

"Of course. Don't I stay, signore?"

"Yes, if Lucrezia won't be frightened."

"It does not matter if she is. When we do not come back she will keep
Guglielmo, the contadino."

"Of course you must stay. You can sleep with me. And to-night we'll play
cards and sing and dance. Have you got any cards, Salvatore?"

"Si, signore. They are dirty, but--"

"That's all right. And we'll sit outside and tell stories, stories of
brigands and the sea. Salvatore, when you know me, you'll know I'm a true
Sicilian."

He grasped Salvatore's hand, but he looked at Maddalena.

XII

Night had come to the Sirens' Isle--a night that was warm, gentle, and
caressing. In the cottage two candles were lit, and the wick was burning
in the glass before the Madonna. Outside the cottage door, on the flat
bit of ground that faced the wide sea, Salvatore and his daughter,
Maurice and Gaspare, were seated round the table finishing their simple
meal, for which Salvatore had many times apologized. Their merry voices,
their hearty laughter rang out in the darkness, and below the sea made
answer, murmuring against the rocks.

At the same moment in an Arab house Hermione bent over a sick man,
praying against death, whose footsteps she seemed already to hear coming
into the room and approaching the bed on which he tossed, white with
agony. And when he was quiet for a little and ceased from moving, she sat
with her hand on his and thought of Sicily, and pictured her husband
alone under the stars upon the terrace before the priest's house, and
imagined him thinking of her. The dry leaves of a palm-tree under the
window of the room creaked in the light wind that blew over the flats,
and she strove to hear the delicate rustling of the leaves of
olive-trees.

Salvatore had little food to offer his guests, only bread, cheese, and
small, black olives; but there was plenty of good red wine, and when the
time of brindisi was come Salvatore and Gaspare called for health after
health, and rivalled each other in wild poetic