"Now it's our turn," cried Hermione.
"Questo vino è bello e fino,
È portato da Castello a mare,
Faccio brindisi al Signor Gaspare."
The boys burst into a hearty laugh, and Gaspare's eyes gleamed with pleasure while Hermione and Maurice drank. Then Sebastiano drew from the inner pocket of his old jacket a little flute, smiling with an air of intense and comic slyness which contorted his face.
"Ah," said Hermione, "I know—it's the tarantella!"
She clapped her hands.
"It only wanted that," she said to Maurice. "Only that—the tarantella!"
"Guai Lucrezia!" cried Gaspare, tyrannically.
Lucrezia bounded to one side, bent her body inward, and giggled with all her heart. Sebastiano leaned his back against a column and put the flute to his lips.
"Here, Maurice, here!" said Hermione.
She made him sit down on one of the seats under the parlor window, facing the view, while the four boys took their places, one couple opposite to the other. Then Sebastiano began to twitter the tune familiar to the Sicilians of Marechiaro, in which all the careless pagan joy of life in the sun seems caught and flung out upon a laughing, dancing world. Delarey laid his hands on the warm tiles of the seat, leaned forward, and watched with eager eyes. He had never seen the tarantella, yet now with his sensation of expectation there was blended another feeling. It seemed to him as if he were going to see something he had known once, perhaps very long ago, something that he had forgotten and that was now going to be recalled to his memory. Some nerve in his body responded to Sebastiano's lively tune. A desire of movement came to him as he saw the gay boys waiting on the terrace, their eyes already dancing, although their bodies were still.