"I don't know, signore. But what should we do there on Etna far away from the sea and from Marechiaro?"
"We should"—he whispered in her ear, seizing this chance almost angrily, almost defiantly, with the thought of Salvatore in his mind—"we should love each other, Maddalena. It is quiet in the beech forests on Etna. No one would come to disturb us, and——"
A chuckle close to his ear made him start. Salvatore's hand was on his arm, and Salvatore's face, looking wily and triumphant, was close to his.
"Gaspare was wrong, there are splendid donkeys here. I have been talking to some friends who have seen them."
There was a tramp of heavy boots on the stones behind them. The fishermen from Catania were coming to see the fun. Salvatore was in glory. To get all and give nothing was, in his opinion, to accomplish the legitimate aim of a man's life. And his friends, those who had dared to sneer and to whisper, and to imagine that he was selling his daughter for money, now knew the truth and were here to witness his ingenuity. Intoxicated by his triumph, he began to show off his power over the Inglese for the benefit of the tramplers behind. He talked to Maurice with a loud familiarity, kept laying his hand on Maurice's arm as they walked, and even called him, with a half-jocose intonation, "compare." Maurice sickened at his impertinence, but was obliged to endure it with patience, and this act of patience brought to the birth within him a sudden, fierce longing for revenge, a longing to pay Salvatore out for his grossness, his greed, his sly and leering affectation of playing the slave when he was really indicating to his compatriots that he considered himself the master. Again Maurice heard the call of the Sicilian blood within him, but this time it did not call him to the tarantella or to love. It called him to strike a blow. But this blow could only be struck through Maddalena, could only be struck if he were traitor to Hermione. For a moment he saw everything red. Again Salvatore called him "compare." Suddenly Maurice could not bear it.
"Don't say that!" he said. "Don't call me that!"
He had almost hissed the words out. Salvatore started, and for an instant, as they walked side by side, the two men looked at each other with eyes that told the truth. Then Salvatore, without asking for any explanation of Maurice's sudden outburst, said:
"Va bene, signore, va bene! I thought for to-day we were all compares. Scusi, scusi."
There was a bitterness of irony in his voice. As he finished he swept off his soft hat and then replaced it more over his left ear than ever. Maurice knew at once that he had done the unforgivable thing, that he had stabbed a Sicilian's amour propre in the presence of witnesses of his own blood. The fishermen from Catania had heard. He knew it from Salvatore's manner, and an odd sensation came to him that Salvatore had passed sentence upon him. In silence, and mechanically, he walked on to the end of the street. He felt like one who, having done something swiftly, thoughtlessly, is suddenly confronted with the irreparable, abruptly sees the future spread out before him bathed in a flash of crude light, the future transformed in a second by that act of his as a landscape is transformed by an earthquake or a calm sea by a hurricane.
And when the watercourse came in sight, with its crowd, its voices, and its multitude of beasts, he looked at it dully for a moment, hardly realizing it.