n. Why not, madonna!"

Maurice burst out laughing.

"And you call me birbante!" he said.

"To know what my father loves best! Signorino! Signorino!"

She shook her out-stretched forefinger to and fro near her nose, smiling,
with her head a little on one side like a crafty child.

"But why, Maddalena--why should I wish your father to play cards till the
dawn. Tell me that! Why should not I wish him, all of us, to go to bed?"

"You are not sleepy, signorino!"

"I shall be in the morning when it's time to fish."

"Then perhaps you will not fish."

"But I must. That is why I have stayed here to-night, to be ready to go
to sea in the morning."

She said nothing, only smiled again. He felt a longing to shake her in
joke. She was such a child now. And yet a few minutes ago her dark eyes
had lured him, and he had felt almost as if in seeking her he sought a
mystery.

"Don't you believe me?" he asked.

But she only answered, with her little gesture of smiling rebuke:

"Signorino! Signorino!"

He did not protest, for now they were down by the sea, and saw the
fishing-boats swaying gently on the water.

"Get in Maddalena. I will row."

He untied the rope, while she stepped lightly in, then he pushed the boat
off, jumping in himself from the rocks.

"You are like a fisherman, signore," said Maddalena.

He smiled and drew the great bladed oars slowly through the calm water,
leaning towards her with each stroke and looking into her eyes.

"I wish I were really a fisherman," he said, "like your father!"

"Why, signore?" she asked, in astonishment.

"Because it's a free life, because it's a life I should love."

She still looked at him with surprise.

"But a fisherman has few soldi, signorino."

"Maddalena," he said, letting the oars drift in the water, "there's only
one good thing in the world, and that is to be free in a life that is
natural to one."

He drew up his feet onto the wooden bench and clasped his hands round his
knees, and sat thus, looking at her while she faced him in the stern of
the boat. He had not turned the boat round. So Maddalena had her face
towards the land, while his was set towards the open sea.

"It isn't having many soldi that makes happiness," he went on. "Gaspare
thinks it is, and Lucrezia, and I dare say your father would--"

"Oh yes, signore! In Sicily we all think so!"

"And so they do in England. But it isn't true."

"But if you have many soldi you can do anything."