The Call of the Blood

She did not finish her sentence in words. Her look at the two men

concluded it. Then she turned and went into the house.

"What is the matter with Lucrezia?" asked Artois.

"Oh, she--she's in love with a shepherd called Sebastiano."

"And he's treating her badly?"

"I'm afraid so. He went to the Lipari Isles, and he doesn't come back."

"A girl there keeps him captive?"

"It seems so."

"Faithful women must not expect to have a perfect time in Sicily," Artois

said.

As he spoke he noticed that a change came in his companion's face. It was

fleeting, but it was marked. It made Artois think: "This man understands Sicilian faithlessness in love."

It made him, too, remember sharply some words of his own said long ago in

London: "I love the South, but I distrust what I love, and I see the South in

him."

There was a silence between the two men. Heat was growing in the long

summer day, heat that lapped them in the influence of the South. Africa

had been hotter, but this seemed the breast of the South, full of glory

and of languor, and of that strange and subtle influence which inclines

the heart of man to passion and the body of man to yield to its desires.

It was glorious, this wonderful magic of the South, but was it wholesome

for Northern men? Was it not full of danger? As he looked at the great,

shining waste of the sea, purple and gold, dark and intense and jewelled,

at the outline of Etna, at the barbaric ruin of the Saracenic castle on

the cliff opposite, like a cry from the dead ages echoing out of the

quivering blue, at the man before him leaning against the blinding white

wall above the steep bank of the ravine, Artois said to himself that the

South was dangerous to young, full-blooded men, was dangerous, to such a

man as Delarey. And he asked himself the question, "What has this man

been doing here in this glorious loneliness of the South, while his wife

has been saving my life in Africa?" And a sense of reproach, almost of

alarm, smote him. For he had called Hermione away. In the terrible

solitude that comes near to the soul with the footfalls of death he had

not been strong enough to be silent. He had cried out, and his friend had

heard and had answered. And Delarey had been left alone with the sun.

"I'm afraid you must feel as if I were your enemy," he said.