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sirocco
155
now sat enthroned upon her face. She looked cold
and unbending, a woman, tempting to win and
conquer.
" You believe in God then, since you carve
Madonnas ?" she said.
He breathed hard. Now it was he that was
paralyzed. He had been a believer himself. He knew
how he had wounded her. He saw that he had
forfeited her love. He had placed an endless
formidable chasm between them.
He must speak, he must win her over to his side.
He began again but feebly and stutteringly.
She listened quietly awhile. Then interrupted
him almost compassionately.
" How did you become like that? "
" I thought of Sicily," he said passively.
" You thought of Sicily," she repeated
thoughtfully. "And why did you come home? "
" I came home to rebel."
It was as though they had talked of a sickness, a
cold, which he had contracted, and which could
easily be cured.
" You came home to ruin us," she said sternly.
" As you wish, as you wish," he said complaisantly,
" You may call it so. As everything now goes, you
probably are right in calling it so. Ah, if one had
not given me wrong information, if I had not come
one week too late! Is it not like us Sicilians to
allow the government to baffle us ? When I came,
the chiefs were already arrested, the island occupied
by forty thousand men ! All lost! "
It sounded strangely desolate within him, when he
said this " All lost." And for this, of which nothing
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