Hermione paused. She had begun to tremble. She put one hand down to the back of the chair, grasping it tightly as if to steady herself.
“I’ll tell you.”
What? What was she going to tell?
That first evening in Sicily—just before they went in to bed—Maurice had looked down over the terrace wall to the sea. He had seen a light—far down by the sea.
It was the light in the House of the Sirens.
“You once lived in Sicily. You once lived in the Casa delle Sirene, beyond the old wall, beyond the inlet. You were there when we were in Sicily, when Gaspare was with us as our servant.”
Maddalena’s lips parted. Her mouth began to gape. It was obvious that she was afraid.
“You—you knew Gaspare. You knew—you knew my husband, the Signore of the Casa del Prete on Monte Amato. You knew him. Do you remember?”
Maddalena only stared up at her with a sort of heavy apprehension, sitting widely in her chair, with her feet apart and her hands always resting on her knees.
“It was in the summer-time—” She was again in Sicily. She was tracing out a story. It was almost as if she saw words and read them from a book. “There were no forestieri in Sicily. They had all gone. Only we were there—” An expression so faint that it was like a fleeting shadow passed over Maddalena’s face, the fleeting shadow of something that denied. “Ah, yes! Till I went away, you mean! I went to Africa. Did you know it then? But before I went—before—” She was thinking, she was burrowing deep down into the past, stirring the heap of memories that lay like drifted leaves. “They used to go—at least they went once—down to the sea. One night they went to the fishing. And they slept out all night. They slept in the caves. Ah, you know that? You remember that night!”