at his idea,
as a pure-blooded Englishman would have laughed. He pondered it. He
cherished it.

On his very first evening in Sicily the spirit had led him to the wall,
had directed his gaze to the far-off light in the house of the sirens. He
remembered how strangely the little light had fascinated his eyes, and
his mind through his eyes, how he had asked what it was, how, when
Hermione had called him to come in to sleep, he had turned upon the steps
to gaze down on it once more. Then he had not known why he gazed. Now he
knew. The spirit that had met him by the sea in Sicily had whispered to
him to look, and he had obeyed because he could not do otherwise.

He dwelt upon that thought, that he had obeyed because he had been
obliged to obey. It was a palliative to his mental misery and his hatred
of himself. The fatalism that is linked with superstition got hold upon
him and comforted him a little. He had not been a free agent. He had had
to do as he had done. Everything had been arranged so that he might sin.
The night of the fishing had prepared the way for the night of the fair.
If Hermione had stayed--but of course she had not stayed. The spirit that
had kept him in Sicily had sent her across the sea to Africa. In the full
flush of his hot-blooded youth, intoxicated by his first knowledge of the
sun and of love, he had been left quite alone. Newly married, he had been
abandoned by his wife for a good, even perhaps a noble, reason. Still, he
had been abandoned--to himself and the keeping of that spirit. Was it any
wonder that he had fallen? He strove to think that it was not. In the
night he had cowered before Hermione and had been cruel with himself.
Now, in the sunshine, he showed fight. He strove to find excuses for
himself. If he did not find excuses he felt that he could not face the
day, face Hermione in sunlight.

And now that the spirit had led him thus far, surely its work was done,
surely it would leave him alone. He tried to believe that.

Then he thought of Maddalena.

She was there, down there where the rising sun glittered on the sea. She
surely was awake, as he was awake. She was thinking, wondering--perhaps
weeping.

He got up. He could not look at the sea any more. The name "House of the
Sirens" suddenly seemed to him a terrible misnomer, now that he thought
of Maddalena perhaps weeping by the sea.

He had his revenge upon Salvatore, but at what a cost!

Salvatore! The fisherman's face rose up