Only Caris had seen in the sunlight that lithe erect figure amongst the gorse, and those two burning, melting, shining eyes, which had incited him to combat.
He was deeply angered with Massaio for stopping the duello.
A knife? What mattered a knife? He had one, too, in his breeches band; in another second he, too, would have had his out, and then Santina would have seen work fit for a brave, bold woman to watch, with the red blood running merrily through the thirsty sand and the tufted heather.
He was not quarrelsome or bloodthirsty; but any man who goes down into Maremma through the 'macchia,' where the 'mal-viventi' hide, learns to know very well how to sell his own life dearly, and hold the lives of others cheaply; and these contraband knives, which the law forbids so uselessly, cost very little to buy, and yet do their work surely, quickly, and well.
He cast one longing look up at Santina standing above amongst the gorse, and moved on sullenly with the other men and the mule, when the cart with rare effort had been pulled erect and dragged out of the sand. It was then only an hour or two after daybreak.
The day came and ended without Caris seeing his goddess again.
During the repose at noontide, when he with others broke bread and ate soup at the big table in Massaio's kitchen, she was not there. They were served by her aunt Eufemia. He had only accepted this work of fetching and stacking for sake of the vicinity to her which it offered; and his heart was heavy and his blood was turned, as he would himself have expressed it.
Chagrin and irritation, in the Italian's opinion, turns the blood as tempest changes milk. He was too shy and tongue-tied to venture to inquire for her; and the instinct of secrecy which characterizes all passion was joined to his natural hesitation in speech.
Massaio's people seemed, too, to him to be very grand folks, with their byres and stalls filled with beasts, and their casks of wine and great earthen jars of oil standing there for anybody to read in mute declaration of their prosperity.
A barrel of wine had never entered the hut of the Lascarises within the memory of man. No one took any notice of him. He was a 'bracciante,' paid by the day, nothing more. Had Eufemia known that he was the old witch's son he would have attracted her attention; but she did not know it. When there is quick rough work to be done, nobody notices who does it.