ird of prey
in the faint candlelight.

They cut for deal and began to play, while Maddalena and Maurice watched.

When Sicilians gamble they forget everything but the game and the money
which it brings to them or takes from them. Salvatore and Gaspare were at
once passionately intent on their cards, and as the night drew on and
fortune favored first one and then the other, they lost all thought of
everything except the twenty-five lire which were at stake. When
Maddalena slipped away into the darkness they did not notice her
departure, and when Maurice laid down the paper on which he had tried to
keep the score, and followed her, they were indifferent. They needed no
score-keeper, for they had Sicilian memories for money matters. Over the
table they leaned, the two candles, now burning low, illuminating their
intense faces, their violent eyes, their brown hands that dealt and
gathered up the cards, and held them warily, alert for the cheating that
in Sicily, when possible, is ever part of the game.

"Carta da cinquanta!"

They had forgotten Maurice's limit for the stakes.

"Carta da cento!"

Their voices died away from Maurice's ears as he stole through the
darkness seeking Maddalena.

Where had she gone, and why? The last question he could surely answer,
for as she stole past him silently, her long, mysterious eyes, that
seemed to hold in their depths some enigma of the East, had rested on his
with a glance that was an invitation. They had not boldly summoned him.
They had lured him, as an echo might, pathetic in its thrilling frailty.
And now, as he walked softly over the dry grass, he thought of those eyes
as he had first seen them in the pale light that had preceded the dawn.
Then they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. Now surely
they were changed. Once they had asked a question. They delivered a
summons to-night. What was in them to-night? The mystery of young
maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to
curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its
dreams, of the truth of its desires.

When he was out of hearing of the card-players Maurice stood still. He
felt the breath of the sea on his face. He heard the murmur of the sea
everywhere around him, a murmur that in its level monotony excited him,
thrilled him, as the level monotony of desert music excites the African
in the still places of the sand. His pulses were beating, and there was
a