In that time between vespers and nones, when, according to the saying, no good woman is seen going about, gnà Pina was the only living creature to be seen wandering across the campagna, over the fiery hot stones of the narrow streets, among the parched stubble of the wide, wide fields that stretched away into the burning haze toward cloudy Etna, where the sky hangs heavy on the horizon.
"Wake up!" said la Lupa to Nanni, who was asleep in the ditch next the dusty harvest-field, with his head on his arms. "Wake up, for I've brought you some wine to cool your throat."
Nanni opened his eyes, half awake, and saw her sitting up straight and pale before him, with her swelling breast, and her eyes as black as coal, and drew back waving his arms,—
"No! a good woman does not go about between vespers and nones," groaned Nanni, thrusting his face in amongst the dried weeds of the ditch as far as he could, and putting his fingers into his hair. "Go away! Get you gone! And don't you come to the threshing-floor any more."
She turned and went away,—la Lupa,—knotting up her splendid tresses again, looking down steadily as she made her way among the hot stubble, with her eyes black as coal.
But she did go back to the threshing-floor, and Nanni no longer reproached her; and when she failed to come, in that hour between vespers and nones, he went, and with perspiration on his brow, waited for her at the top of the white deserted footpath, but afterwards he would thrust his hands through his hair, and every time he would say, "Go away! Go away! Don't come to the threshing-floor again."
Maricchia wept night and day, and she looked into her mother's face with eyes blazing with tears and jealousy, like a lupachiotta, a young wolf herself, every time that she saw her coming back from the fields, silent and pale.
"Vile! scellerata!" she would say, "Vile mamma."
"Hold your tongue!"
"Thief! thief!"