ed to her that the
remark had had a peculiar significance. She had even said, "What is it
makes one think most of death when--when life, new life, is very near?"

Existence is made up of loss and gain. New beings rush into life day by
day and hour by hour. Birth is about us, but death is about us too. And
when we are given something, how often is something also taken from us!
Was that to be her fate?

And Maurice--he had been led to speak of death, afterwards, just as he
was going away to the sea. She recalled his words, or the demon whispered
them over to her:

"'One can never tell what will happen--suppose one of us were to die
here? Don't you think it would be good to lie there where we lay this
afternoon, under the oak-trees, in sight of Etna and the sea? I think it
would."

They were his very last words, his who was so full of life, who scarcely
ever seemed to realize the possibility of death. All through the day
death had surely been in the air about them. She remembered her dream, or
quasi-dream. In it she had spoken. She had muttered an appeal, "Don't
leave me alone!" and at another time she had tried to realize Maurice in
England and had failed. She had felt as if Sicily would never let him go.
And when she had spoken her thought he had hinted that Sicily could only
keep him by holding him in arms of earth, holding him in those arms that
keep the body of man forever.

Perhaps it was ordained that her Sicilian should never leave the island
that he loved. In all their Sicilian days how seldom had she thought of
their future life together in England! Always she had seen herself with
Maurice in the south. He had seemed to belong to the south, and she had
brought him to the south. And now--would the south let him go? The
thought of the sirens of legend flitted through her mind. They called men
to destruction. She imagined them sitting among the rocks near the Casa
della Sirene, calling--calling to her Sicilian.

Long ago, when she first knew him well and loved his beauty, she had
sometimes thought of him as a being of legend. She had let her fancy play
about him tenderly, happily. He had been Mercury, Endymion, a dancing
faun, Cupid vanishing from Psyche as the dawn came. And now she let a
cruel fancy have its will for a moment. She imagined the sirens calling
among the rocks, and Maurice listening to their summons, and going to his
destruction. The darkness of the ravine helped the demon who hurried with
her