from the shore, urged by the
powerful arms of Salvatore, its occupants were silent. The merriment and
the ardor of the night, the passion of cards and of desire, were gone, as
if they had been sucked up into the smoky wonder of the clouds, or sucked
down into the silver wonder of the sea.

Gaspare looked drowsy and less happy than usual. He had not yet recovered
from his indignation at the success of Salvatore's cheating, and Maurice,
who had not slept, felt the bounding life, the bounding fire of his youth
held in check as by the action of a spell. The carelessness of
excitement, of passion, was replaced by another carelessness--the
carelessness of dream. It seemed to him now as if nothing mattered or
ever could matter. On the calm silver of a hushed and breathless sea,
beneath dense white vapors that hid the sky, he was going out slowly,
almost noiselessly, to a fate of which he knew nothing, to a quiet
emptiness, to a region which held no voices to call him this way or that,
no hands to hold him, no eyes to regard him. His face was damp with
sweat. He leaned over the gunwale and trailed his hand in the sea. It
seemed to him unnaturally warm. He glanced up at the clouds. Heaven was
blotted out. Was there a heaven? Last night he had thought there must
be--but that was long ago. Was he sad? He scarcely knew. He was dull, as
if the blood in him had run almost dry. He was like a sapless tree.
Hermione and Maddalena--what were they? Shadows rather than women. He
looked steadily at the sea. Was it the same element upon which he had
been only a few hours ago under the stars with Maddalena? He could
scarcely believe that it was the same. Sirocco had him fast, sirocco that
leaves many Sicilians unchanged, unaffected, but that binds the stranger
with cords of cotton wool which keep him like a net of steel.

Gaspare lay down in the bottom of the boat, buried his face in his arms,
and gave himself again to sleep. Salvatore looked at him, and then at
Maurice, and smiled with a fine irony.

"He thought he would win, signore."

"Cosa?" said Maurice, startled by the sound of a voice.

"He thought that he could play better than I, signore."

Salvatore closed one eye, and stuck his tongue a little out of the left
side of his mouth, then drew it in with a clicking noise.

"No one gets the better of me," he said. "They may try. Many have tried,
but in the end--"

He shook his head, took his right hand from the oar and flapped it