A shepherd, who had been drinking a cup of brandy, came out and pinched the girl as he passed. "_Sas manas siccas_ (wither your hands), skinned hare!" cried Agata. She beckoned Anania into the tavern, and asked what he would drink. "Nothing. Good-bye! good-bye." However, she fetched white wine, and, as he drank, leaned languidly against the bar watching him. She said, "I'm going to Cagliari as soon as I've bought a new dress with gold buttons for the chemisette. I'll go to Cagliari and get a place. We shall meet again. The devil! Here comes Antonino! he's my sweetheart, and is mad jealous of you. Ah, my jewel, good-bye! good-bye!" Saying this she flung herself upon him with a wild cat spring and kissed him hotly on the lips. Then she pushed him away, and he went out, confounded and agitated, hurrying past Antonino whose look of hate he now understood. For some minutes he walked not knowing whither. He was new to kisses, and could only think of Margherita, the longing to see her making his blood boil. "Oh!" he cried suddenly finding himself in the arms of another woman. "Child of my heart!" cried Nanna, crying and laughing, and offering him a parcel, "are you really going? God go with you and bless you as he blesses the ears of corn. We shall see you again, but meantime--here take this, my darling. Don't refuse or I shall die of grief." To prevent Nanna's death he accepted the parcel, but shuddered, feeling something very unpleasant on his cheek. "There!" said Nanna, when she had kissed him, "I couldn't help it. It will wash off, dear. It won't prevent the flower-smelling kisses of the golden girls who will pick you up like a sugar plum." Anania made no protests, but this thrust into reality restored his moral equilibrium and cancelled the burning sensation given him by the kiss of Agata. When he got home he opened Nanna's parcel, and found it contained thirteen _soldi_ (half-pence). "I hope you've been to your godfather," said Aunt Tatàna. "I'm going at once after dinner," he replied. But after dinner he went into the courtyard and stretched himself on a mat under the elder tree, round which buzzed the bees and the flies. The air was warm. Between the boughs Anania saw great white clouds floating across the blue heaven. An infinite sweetness fell from those clouds. It seemed a rain of warm milk. Distant memories, wandering, changing, like the clouds, passed through his mind confused with recent impressions. Now he was back in the dreary landscape guarded by the sounding pines, where his father had ploughed and sown the _padrone_'s corn. The sounding of the pines is like the voice of the sea. The sky is deeply, monotonously blue. Anania remembered the lines--whose? Baudelaire's perhaps?-- "Blue the colour of her eyes, Deep and empty as the skies." The eyes of Margherita? No, that was an insult to her! But it was satisfactory to be able to quote such an original verse--