‘Antonio, signorina.’
She shook her head with a show of impatience.
‘Your real name—your last name.’
‘Yamhankeesh.’
‘Oh!’ she laughed. ‘Antonio Yamhankeesh doesn’t seem to me a very musical combination; I don’t think I ever heard anything like it before.’
‘It suits me, signorina.’ His tone carried a suggestion of wounded dignity. ‘Yamhankeesh has a ver’ beautiful meaning in my language—“He who dares not, wins not.”’
‘And that is your motto?’
‘Si, signorina.’
‘A very dangerous motto, Tony; it will some day get you into trouble.’
They had reached the base of the mountain, and their path now broadened into the semblance of a road which wound through the fields, between fragrant hedgerows, under towering chestnut trees. All about them was the fragrance of the dewy, flower-scented summer night, the flash of fireflies, the chirp of crickets, occasionally the note of a nightingale. Before them out of a cluster of cypresses, rose the square graceful outline of the village campanile.