"Indeed, I do not," she said; "or perhaps I do. But do not scoff at that, for it is your best friend. It has been the tradition of our race to fly in the face of prophecy. Besides, my people are not your people, and it is a long way--I do not know how far, perhaps thousands of miles--from Sicily to England; and we are a people who live in a summer land, where one can even gather figs of thistles, but where everything one gathers turns into the lotus before it reaches the mouth, and robs the mind and limbs of all desire saving to eat and drink and be merry. And we of Sicily, called of the ancients the 'laughing land,' cannot even be merry, for every race which has conquered Sicily knows that it must itself be conquered afterwards. And the land of the vanquished of many races sits with dry eyes and sunburned limbs, the Andromeda of the ages." Will was not scholar enough to plead that he was of course the Perseus, but she did it for him. She continued: "And we can have no Perseus, or your northern land might well be it, for the curse of the gods is upon us; and," she added sceptically, but not so sceptically as superstitiously, "in the centre of the island is the entrance to the lower world, with _solfataras_ for miles round." "Rusidda, you cannot be serious!" "Dear W-Will, I am serious, so far as that I cannot love you." "Perhaps there is some one else?" he said, a sudden light breaking upon him. "No; I can give you my word I have never even thought of marrying some one else." "Then you are trifling with me," he said to her fiercely. "Can you not see that I love you with all my heart and soul; that it is a matter of life and death; that I could kill the man who should come between us?" and then he struck his fist on the marble table of the belvedere. "There must be some one trifling with your feelings." "Indeed there is not, W-Will," pleaded Rusidda, a little scared by his vehemence. "I am sorry," he said, kissing her tenderly; "but oh, Rusidda, you do not know how your refusal maddens me--how it dries my life-blood!" "Oh, W-Will!" she said, with a sad smile, while surveying the sinewy figure, the bronzed face, the clear proud eyes. "Don't mock me, little one." "I mock you!" she said, her arms round him in an instant: "have I not told you I pray the good Santa Rosalia, night and morning, to change my heart towards you?" "Will you swear not to love any one better than me?" he added desperately. "I cannot swear; but I shall never marry." "God in Heaven!" was all he said; and, snatching her hand to his lips, he came down from the belvedere with bowed head, and walking straight past us without raising his eyes, rushed through the lemon grove and out of the gate and down between the high walls of the groves. The Prince divined what had happened, and for the nonce said nothing.