"Have you been happy to-day, Maddalena?" Maurice asked.
"Si, signore, very happy. And you?"
He did not answer.
"It will all be very different to-morrow," he said.
He was trying to realize to-morrow, but he could not.
"We need not think of to-morrow," Maddalena said.
She arranged her skirt with her hands, and crossed one foot over the
other.
"Do you always live for the day?" Maurice asked her.
She did not understand him.
"I do not want to think of to-morrow," she said. "There will be no fair
then."
"And you would like always to be at the fair?"
"Si, signore, always."
There was a great conviction in her simple statement.
"And you, signorino?"
She was curious about him to-night.
"I don't know what I should like," he said.
He looked up at the great darkness of Etna, and again a longing came to
him to climb up, far up, into those beech forests that looked towards the
Isles of Lipari. He wanted greater freedom. Even the fair was prison.
"But I think," he said, after a pause--"I think I should like to carry
you off, Maddalena, up there, far up on Etna."
He remembered his feeling when he had put his arms round her in the
dance. It had been like putting his arms round ignorance that wanted to
be knowledge. Who would be Maddalena's teacher? Not he. And yet he had
almost intended to have his revenge upon Salvatore.
"Shall we go now?" he said. "Shall we go off to Etna, Maddalena?"
"Signorino!"
She gave a little laugh.
"We must go home after the fireworks."
"Why should we? Why should we not take the donkeys now? Gaspare is
dancing. Your father is playing cards. No one would notice. Shall we?
Shall we go now and get the donkeys, Maddalena?"
But she replied: "A girl can only go like that with a man when she is married."
"That's not true," he said. "She can go like that with a man she loves."
"But then she is wicked, and the Madonna will not hear her when she
prays, signorino."
"Wouldn't you do anything for a man you really loved? Wouldn't you forget
everything? Wouldn't you forget even the Madonna?"
She looked at him.
"Non lo so."
It seemed to him that he was answered.
"Wouldn't you forget the Madonna for me?" he whispered, leaning towards
her.