Hermione laughed. She had been feeling a little dull, but now the sound of the lusty voices and the laughter from the ravine filled her with a sudden cheerfulness, and sent a glow of anticipation into her heart.
"What is a cinico, signora?"
"A Lucrezia. But you don't know your padrone. He won't forget us."
Lucrezia reddened. She feared she had perhaps said something that seemed disrespectful.
"Oh, signora, there is not another like the padrone. Every one says so. Ask Gaspare and Sebastiano. I only meant that—"
"I know. Well, to-day you will understand that all men are not forgetful, when you eat your fish."
Lucrezia still looked very doubtful, but she said nothing more.
"There they are!" exclaimed Hermione.
She waved her hand and cried out. Life suddenly seemed quite different to her. These moving figures peopled gloriously the desert waste, these ringing voices filled with music the brooding silence of it. She murmured to herself a verse of scripture, "Sorrow may endure for a night, but joy cometh with the morning," and she realized for the first time how absurdly sad and deserted she had been feeling, how unreasonably forlorn. By her present joy she measured her past—not sorrow exactly; she could not call it that—her past dreariness, and she said to herself with a little shock almost of fear, "How terribly dependent I am!"