--his insincerity to Hermione, his betrayal
of her complete trust in him, nothing more--so Salvatore now, while he
sat at meat with the Inglese, mentally put a limit to his own
complaisance, a complaisance which had been born of his intense avarice.
To-day he would get all he could out of the Inglese--money, food, wine, a
donkey--who knew what? And then--good-bye to soft speeches. Those
fishermen, his friends, his comrades, his world, in fact, should have
their mouths shut once for all. He knew how to look after his girl, and
they should know that he knew, they and all Marechiaro, and all San
Felice, and all Cattaro. His limit, like Maurice's, was that day of the
fair, and it was nearly reached. For the hours were hurrying towards the
night and farewells.

Moved by his abrupt desire to stand well with everybody during this last
festa, Maurice began to speak to Salvatore of the donkey auction. When
would it begin?

"Chi lo sa?"

No one knew. In Sicily all feasts are movable. Even mass may begin an
hour too late or an hour too early. One thought the donkey auction would
start at fourteen, another at sixteen o'clock. Gaspare was imperiously
certain, over the macaroni, which had now made its appearance, that the
hour was seventeen. There were to be other auctions, auctions of
wonderful things. A clock that played music--the "Marcia Reale" and the
"Tre Colori"--was to be put up; suits of clothes, too; boots, hats, a
chair that rocked like a boat on the sea, a revolver ornamented with
ivory. Already--no one knew when, for no one had missed him--he had been
to view these treasures. As he spoke of them tongues were loosed and eyes
shone with excitement. Money was in the air. Prices were passionately
discussed, values debated. All down the table went the words "soldi,"
"lire," "lire sterline," "biglietti da cinque," "biglietti da dieci."
Salvatore's hatred died away, suffocated for the moment under the weight
of his avarice. A donkey--yes, he meant to get a donkey with the
stranger's money. But why stop there? Why not have the clock and the
rocking-chair and the revolver? His sharpness of the Sicilian, a
sharpness almost as keen and sure as that of the Arab, divined the
intensity, the recklessness alive in the Englishman to-day, bred of that
limit, "my last day of the careless life," to which his own limit was
twin-brother, but of which he knew nothing. And as Maurice was intense
to-day, because there were so few hours left t