e sat for a long time wondering, thinking, but not praying. She did not
feel as if she could ever pray any more. The world was lighted up by the
sun. The sea began to gleam, the coast-line to grow more distinct, the
outlines of the mountains and of the Saracenic Castle on the height
opposite to her more hard and more barbaric against the deepening blue.
She saw smoke coming from the mouth of Etna, sideways, as if blown
towards the sea. A shepherd boy piped somewhere below her. And still the
tune was the tarantella. She listened to it--the tarantella. So short a
time ago Maurice had danced with the boys upon the terrace! How can such
life be so easily extinguished? How can such joy be not merely clouded
but utterly destroyed? A moment, and from the body everything is
expelled; light from the eyes, speech from the lips, movement from the
limbs, joy, passion from the heart. How can such a thing be?

The little shepherd boy played on and on. He was nearer now. He was
ascending the slope of the mountain, coming up towards heaven with his
little happy tune. She heard him presently among the oak-trees
immediately below her, passing almost at her feet.

To Hermione the thin sound of the reed-flute always had suggested Arcady.
Even now it suggested Arcady--the Arcady of the imagination: wide soft
airs, blue skies and seas, eternal sunshine and delicious shade, and
happiness where is a sweet noise of waters and of birds, a sweet and deep
breathing of kind and bounteous nature.

And that little boy with the flute would die. His foot might slip now as
he came upward, and no more could he play souls into Arcady!

The tune wound away to her left, like a gay and careless living thing
that was travelling ever upward, then once more came towards her. But now
it was above her. She turned her head and she saw the little player
against the blue. He was on a rock, and for a moment he stood still. On
his head was a long woollen cap, hanging over at one side. It made
Hermione think of the woollen cap she had seen come out of the darkness
of the ravine as she waited with Gaspare for the padrone. Against the
blue, standing on the gray and sunlit rock, with the flute at his lips,
and his tiny, deep-brown fingers moving swiftly, he looked at one with
the mountain and yet almost unearthly, almost as if the blue had given
birth to him for a moment, and in a moment would draw him back again into
the womb of its wonder. His goats were all around hi