The Call of the Blood

"Maddalena!" he exclaimed.

He put out his hands to help her out. She stood on the gunwale of the

boat and jumped lightly down, with a little laugh, onto the beach.

"Maddalena! Per Dio! Ma che bellezza!"

She laughed again, and stood there on the stones before him smiling and

watching him, with her head a little on one side, and the hand that held

the tight bouquet of roses and ferns, round as a ring and red as dawn, up

to her lips, as if a sudden impulse prompted her now to conceal something

of her pleasure.

"Le piace?"

It came to him softly over the roses.

Maurice said nothing, but took her hand and looked at her. Salvatore was

fastening up the boat and putting the oars into their places, and getting

his jacket and hat.

What a transformation it was, making an almost new Maddalena! This

festival dress was really quite wonderful. He felt inclined to touch it

here and there, to turn Maddalena round for new aspects, as a child turns

round a marvellous doll.

Maddalena wore a tudischina, a bodice of blue cotton velvet, ornamented

with yellow silken fringes, and opening over the breast to show a section

of snowy white edged with little buttons of sparkling steel. Her

petticoat--the sinava--was of pea-green silk and thread, and was

partially covered by an apron, a real coquette of an apron, white and

green, with little pockets and puckers, and a green rosette where the

strings met round the supple waist. Her sleeves were of white muslin,

bound with yellow silk ribbons, and her stockings were blue, the color of

the bodice. On her feet were shining shoes of black leather, neatly tied

with small, black ribbons, and over her shoulders was a lovely shawl of

blue and white with a pattern of flowers. She wore nothing on her head,

but in her ears were heavy ear-rings, and round her neck was a thin

silver chain with bright-blue stones threaded on it here and there.

"Maddalena!" Maurice said, at last. "You are a queen to-day!"

He stopped, then he added: "No, you are a siren to-day, the siren I once fancied you might be."

"A siren, signorino? What is that?"

"An enchantress of the sea with a voice that makes men--that makes men

feel they cannot go, they cannot leave it."

Maddalena lifted the roses a little higher to hide her face, but Maurice

saw that her eyes were still smiling, and it seemed to him that she

looked even more radiantly happy than when she had taken his hands to

spring down to the beach.