"I can't sing it alone."
"Well, sing another."
"Like that, all at once, in your presence? I'm ashamed. I'll sing on the road. Addio, signor."
"Addio, Favetta."
And she resumed her way along the path, dragging the peaceable beast after her. When she had gone a little way, she struck up the song with all the strength of her voice that invaded the surrounding luminous country.
The sun had just set, and an extraordinarily vivid light was shed over the coasts and over the sea; an immense wave of impalpable gold mounted from the occidental sky to the zenith and redescended to the opposite side, the glassy transparency of which it penetrated with infinite slowness. Gradually the Adriatic became more clear and more gentle, approaching the green hue of the first leaves of the new shoots of willows. Alone, the red sails, as superb as if they were of purple, broke the diffused light.
"It's a holiday," thought George, dazzled by the splendid sunset, feeling palpitate around him the joy of life. Where does the human creature breathe for whom the whole day, from dawn to twilight, should not be a Holiday consecrated by some new conquest?
On the hill, the songs in honor of the nativity of the bread continued and alternated. The long feminine files appeared on the slopes and disappeared. Here and there, in the still air, columns of smoke rose slowly from invisible fires. The spectacle grew solemn and seemed to sink back into the mystery of the primitive centuries, in the holiness of a celebration of rural Dionysiacs.
CHAPTER IV.
Since the tragic night on which Candia, lowering her voice, had spoken of the witchcraft that hung over the men of the Trabocco, that great, whitish framework, stretched along on the rocks, had more than once attracted the strangers' attention and excited their curiosity. In the crescent of the little musical bay, that bristling and treacherous form, continually lying in ambush, seemed to deny the benignity of the solitude. At the burning and motionless noon-times, at the misty twilights, it often took on formidable aspects. At times, when all was still, one could hear the grinding of the capstan and the creaking of the timber. During the moonless nights, the red light of the torches was seen reflected by the water.