“You can never tell.”
“What I was going to say was,” he protested rather hotly, “that I have saved quite a good bit of prize-money already, and that under the Admiral I shall make enough to retire on in a few years.”
At the mention of the Admiral’s name her face changed a little.
“And so, Rusidda——”
Under ordinary circumstances he would have caught the tempting rebellious creature in his arms, and trusted to beating down her defiance with the vehemence of his embrace; but, having been accorded the freedom of embracing her, he took no such extreme measure. When once a woman has accorded a man this freedom, it is not the vehement but the gentle embrace which steals her heart or her judgment; and therefore it was only with lips laid softly on her neck that he asked, “Oh, why will you not marry me, Rusidda?”
“I have told you I cannot love you; besides, I have told you about the fair-haired stranger. I look so like being the last woman of my race that it would not be safe for me to marry you.”
“Fancy believing in an old wife’s tale like that!” he said bitterly.
“Indeed, I do not,” she said; “or perhaps I do. But do not scoff at that, for it is your best friend. It has been the tradition of our race to fly in the face of prophecy. Besides, my people are not your people, and it is a long way—I do not know how far, perhaps thousands of miles—from Sicily to England; and we are a people who live in a summer land, where one can even gather figs of thistles, but where everything one gathers turns into the lotus before it reaches the mouth, and robs the mind and limbs of all desire saving to eat and drink and be merry. And we of Sicily, called of the ancients the ‘laughing land,’ cannot even be merry, for every race which has conquered Sicily knows that it must itself be conquered afterwards. And the land of the vanquished of many races sits with dry eyes and sunburned limbs, the Andromeda of the ages.”
Will was not scholar enough to plead that he was of course the Perseus, but she did it for him. She continued: “And we can have no Perseus, or your northern land might well be it, for the curse of the gods is upon us; and,” she added sceptically, but not so sceptically as superstitiously, “in the centre of the island is the entrance to the lower world, with solfataras for miles round.”
“Rusidda, you cannot be serious!”