“Angelo was a seaman, and was often away. One night when I was in my garden watering my roses—they are worth seeing, as you will know presently, signore—I saw Angelo and Pancrazia coming up to the gate together. I set down the pot of water. Pancrazia was smiling, and he looked brave—you know how a boy of courage looks when he’s just found someone who wants to be taken care of, signore? “I understood, but I pretended not to, and said innocently: ‘What is it, my children?’ “Then she told me, while he just stared at her, with his eyes getting graver at every word she said. They were going to be husband and wife, and I was the first to know it. Angelo had to go away in the morning to Messina. He’d got a job to sail on an orange boat to the Lipari Islands, and was to be away two months in all. For those two months the secret was to be kept among us three. “It was Pancrazia’s wish. She didn’t want to face the village talk till Angelo could stay beside her. There was always something more retiring about her than about the other girls. It seemed to go with her purity. I blessed them both, and, when I’d finished watering my roses, I prayed for them and for their children. “Angelo went away in the morning, and Pancrazia kept up bravely. The village folk gossiped and laughed, and spoke of the faithlessness of the men of the sea, but Pancrazia only smiled to herself. And I smiled too. You see, we knew what had been settled, but they, poor, silly souls, were ignorant. Yet, as it turned out, I don’t know⸺” “Time went on, and one evening, after a month had gone, Pancrazia came rushing into my garden like a mad thing, with a bit of paper in her hand. Angelo was desperately ill with fever far away in Lipari, and the orange boat had had to sail from there and leave him. I scarcely knew Pancrazia. There was a passion in her I’d never suspected, although I know the fires that slumber in us, who are almost the sucking children of Etna, signore, as you might say. “‘What shall I do? What shall I do?’ she kept on crying out. “‘Pray,’ I said. ‘Pray, my child, to the Madonna della Rocca.’ “When she left me it was night. Very late I walked out to the wall above the precipice to look at Etna and the stars, and there, beyond the gateway, on the stones before the shrine, I saw a figure kneeling, and I heard a little noise of sobbing. I went, and whispered: “‘You must not cry thus when you pray, Pancrazia. The Madonna will think you doubt her.’ “Then, signore, the sobbing stopped. “A week went by, two weeks, and then came news that Angelo was worse, was dying out there in the islands. That day Pancrazia came again to my house. She was calm, signore, calm, and her face white and still as a pan of milk. “‘Padre,’ she said, ‘shut the door.’ “I shut it. “‘Padre,’ she said, ‘I’m going to give something to the Madonna della Rocca, and no one is to know but you. Will you promise never to tell?’ “I promised solemnly, as she desired.