Where had she gone, and why? The last question he could surely answer, for as she stole past him silently, her long, mysterious eyes, that seemed to hold in their depths some enigma of the East, had rested on his with a glance that was an invitation. They had not boldly summoned him. They had lured him, as an echo might, pathetic in its thrilling frailty. And now, as he walked softly over the dry grass, he thought of those eyes as he had first seen them in the pale light that had preceded the dawn. Then they had been full of curiosity, like a young animal's. Now surely they were changed. Once they had asked a question. They delivered a summons to-night. What was in them to-night? The mystery of young maidenhood, southern, sunlit, on the threshold of experience, waking to curious knowledge, to a definite consciousness of the meaning of its dreams, of the truth of its desires.
When he was out of hearing of the card-players Maurice stood still. He felt the breath of the sea on his face. He heard the murmur of the sea everywhere around him, a murmur that in its level monotony excited him, thrilled him, as the level monotony of desert music excites the African in the still places of the sand. His pulses were beating, and there was an almost savage light in his eyes. Something in the atmosphere of the sea-bound retreat made him feel emancipated, as if he had stepped out of the prison of civilized life into a larger, more thoughtless existence, an existence for which his inner nature fitted him, for which he had surely been meant all these years that he had lived, unconscious of what he really was and of what he really needed.
"How happy I could have been as a Sicilian fisherman!" he thought. "How happy I could be now!"
"St! St!"
He looked round quickly.
"St! St!"
It must be Maddalena, but where was she? He moved forward till he was at the edge of the land where the tiny path wound steeply downward to the sea. There she was standing with her face turned in his direction, and her lips opened to repeat the little summoning sound.
"How did you know I was there?" he said, whispering, as he joined her. "Did you hear me come?"
"No, signore."
"Then—"