o triumph in hate. Salvatore
thought him such a fool, held him in such contempt! Something within him
was burning to-day as a cheek burns with shame, something within him that
was like the kernel of him, like the soul of his manhood, which the
fisherman was sneering at. He did not say to himself strongly that he did
not care what such men thought of him. He could not, for his nature was
both reckless and sensitive. He did care, as if he had been a Sicilian
half doubtful whether he dared to show his face in the piazza. And he had
another feeling, too, which had come to him when Salvatore had answered
his exclamation of irresistible anger at being called "compare," the
feeling that, whether he sinned against the fisherman or not, the
fisherman meant to do him harm. The sensation might be absurd, would have
seemed to him probably absurd in England. Here, in Sicily, it sprang up
and he had just to accept it, as a man accepts an instinct which guides
him, prompts him.

Salvatore had turned down his thumb that day.

Maurice was not afraid of him. Physically, he was quite fearless. But
this sensation of having been secretly condemned made him feel hard,
cruel, ready, perhaps, to do a thing not natural to him, to sacrifice
another who had never done him wrong. At that moment it seemed to him
that it would be more manly to triumph over Salvatore by a double
betrayal than to "run straight," conquer himself and let men not of his
code think of him as they would.

Not of his code! But what was his code? Was it that of England or that of
Sicily? Which strain of blood was governing him to-day? Which strain
would govern him finally? Artois would have had an interesting specimen
under his observant eyes had he been at the fair of San Felice.

Maddalena willingly obeyed Maurice's suggestion.

"Get well into the shade," he said. "There's just enough to hold us, if
we sit close together. You don't mind that, do you?"

"No, signore."

"Put your back against the trunk--there."

He kept his hat off. Over the railway line from the hot-looking sea there
came a little breeze that just moved his short hair and the feathers of
gold about Maddalena's brow. In the watercourse, but at some distance,
they saw the black crowd of men and women and beasts swarming over the
hot stones.

"How can they?" Maurice muttered, as he looked down.

"Cosa?"

He laughed.

"I was thinking out loud. I meant how can they bargain and bother hour
after h