The Call of the Blood

While Artois was thinking this Maurice's expression suddenly changed, his

attitude became easier. He turned round from the wall, and Artois saw

that the keen anxiety had gone out of his eyes. Gaspare was below with

his gun pretending to look for birds, and had made a sign that the

approaching figure was not that of Salvatore. Maurice's momentary sense

of relief was so great that it threw him off his guard.

"What can have been happening beyond the wall?" Artois thought.

He felt as if a drama had been played out there and the dénouement had

been happy.

Hermione came back at this moment.

"Poor Lucrezia!" she said. "She's plucky, but Sebastiano is making her

suffer horribly."

"Here!" said Artois, almost involuntarily.

"It does seem almost impossible, I know."

She sat down again near him and smiled at her husband.

"You are coming back to health, Emile. And Maurice and I--well, we are in

our garden. It seems wrong, terribly wrong, that any one should suffer

here. But Lucrezia loves like a Sicilian. What violence there is in these

people!"

"England must not judge them."

He looked at Maurice.

"What's that?" asked Hermione. "Something you two were talking about when

I was in the kitchen?"

Maurice looked uneasy.

"I was only saying that I think the sun--the South has an influence," he

said, "and that----"

"An influence!" exclaimed Hermione. "Of course it has! Emile, you would

have seen that influence at work if you had been with us on our first day

in Sicily. Your tarantella, Maurice!"

She smiled again happily, but her husband did not answer her smile.

"What was that?" said Artois. "You never told me in Africa."

"The boys danced a tarantella here on the terrace to welcome us, and it

drove Maurice so mad that he sprang up and danced too. And the strange

thing was that he danced as well as any of them. His blood called him,

and he obeyed the call."

She looked at Artois to remind him of his words.

"It's good when the blood calls one to the tarantella, isn't it?" she

asked him. "I think it's the most wildly innocent expression of extreme

joy in the world. And yet"--her expressive face changed, and into her

prominent brown eyes there stole a half-whimsical, half-earnest look--"at

the end--Maurice, do you know that I was almost frightened that day at

the end?"