He had been invited to the festa and he had refused to go--almost eagerly
he had refused. Why? There had been something secret in his mind which
had prompted him. He had said--and even to himself--that he did not go
lest his presence might bring a disturbing element into the peasants'
gayety. But was that his reason?
Leaning over the wall he looked down upon the sea. The star that seemed
caught in the sea smiled at him, summoned him. Its gold was like the
gold, the little feathers of gold in the dark hair of a Sicilian girl
singing the song of the May beside the sea: "Maju torna, maju veni
Cu li belli soi ciureri--"
He tried to hum the tune, but it had left his memory. He longed to hear
it once more under the olive-trees of the Sirens' Isle.
Again his thought went to Hermione. Very soon she would be out there, far
out on the silver of the sea. Had she wanted him to go with her? He knew
that she had. Yet she had not asked him to go, had not hinted at his
going. Even she had refused to let him go. And he had not pressed it.
Something had held him back from insisting, something secret, and
something secret had kept her from accepting his suggestion. She was
going to her greatest friend, to the man she had known intimately, long
before she had known him--Delarey--and he was left alone. In England he
had never had a passing moment of jealousy of Artois; but now, to-night,
mingled with his creeping resentment against the joys of the peasants, of
those not far from him under the moon of Sicily, there was a sensation of
jealousy which came from the knowledge that his wife was travelling to
her friend. That friend might be dead, or she might nurse him back to
life. Delarey thought of her by his bedside, ministering to him,
performing the intimate offices of the attendant on a sick man, raising
him up on his pillows, putting a cool hand on his burning forehead,
sitting by him at night in the silence of a shadowy room, and quite
alone.
He thought of all this, and the Sicilian that was in him grew suddenly
hot with a burning sense of anger, a burning desire for action,
preventive or revengeful. It was quite unreasonable, as unreasonable as
the vagrant impulse of a child, but it was strong as the full-grown
determination of a man. Hermione had belonged to him. She was his. And
the old Sicilian blood in him protested against that which would be if
Artois were still alive when she reached Africa.