Hermione felt that under the circumstances it was useless to blush for
Lucrezia, useless to meet blatant frankness with sensitive delicacy.

"Do you want Lucrezia for your wife?" she said.

"Well, signora, I'm strong. A stick or a knife in my hand and no man can
touch me. You've never seen me do the scherma con coltello? One day I'll
show you with Gaspare. And I can play better even than the men from
Bronte on the ceramella. You've heard me. Lucrezia knows I can have any
girl I like."

There was a simplicity in his immense superiority to women that robbed it
of offensiveness and almost made Hermione laugh. In it, too, she felt the
touch of the East. Arabs had been in Sicily and left their traces there,
not only in the buildings of Sicily, but in its people's songs, and in
the treatment of the women by the men.

"And are you going to choose Lucrezia?" she asked, gravely.

"Signora, I wasn't sure. But yesterday, I had a letter from Messina. They
want me there. I've got a job that'll pay me well to go to the Lipari
Islands with a cargo."

"Are you a sailor, too?"

"Signora, I can do anything."

"And will you be long away?"

"Who knows, signora? But I told Lucrezia to-day, and when she cried I
told her something else. We are 'promised.'"