For some unknown reason, Caleb felt happier than he had for days. He was ashamed of the feeling, but so strong was it that he made no further demur. People were starting for the music room. Piloted by Desirée, (who managed to make it perfectly clear to divers and sundry youths, en route, that she was quite content to remain with her present escort) Conover found himself at last, enthroned on a maddeningly uncomfortable camp-stool; with the girl at his left side. The musicale opened with a long, intricate piano solo; played with splendid persistence by a short young man with long hair. The night was hot. The bright-lit, overcrowded room was hotter. Caleb had eaten largely and had drunk more than was his wont. There is something very soporific, to the Philistine outlander, in a rendition of ultra-classical music long sustained. Conover shook himself impatiently to scare off the drowsiness that threatened to enmesh him. Desirée glanced at him with merry encouragement as the tireless pianist’s last reluctant note was followed by a ripple of civil applause. The clapping and Desirée’s look combined to bring Caleb’s drowsy senses back to normal wakefulness. “That chap,” he whispered, “can’t play anywhere near as good as you do. Lord, but he did hit that old pianner some cruel ones! After he’d tired it all out, too; so it couldn’t get back at him. I bet them keys wish they had _your_ white little fingers pettin’ ’em instead of that blacksmith’s. What’s this next turn goin’ to be?” “A tenor solo,” she answered. “It’s the ‘Siciliana’ from _Cavalleria Rusticana_. Oh, good! It’s to be accompanied by the harp. It always ought to be, I think. Don’t you?” “Sure!” responded Caleb, with an air of loyal certainty. But Desirée was too much engrossed in the prelude to admonish him. A few staccato chords; then began the song. At first, repressed floridity of phrase; then passion bursting starkly through the convention of stilted word and melody; rising at last to a crescendo where speech failed and a hot-gasped “_A--ah!_” broke off the strain. To Caine, listening impassive on the other side of Desirée from Conover, the air conjured up its picture as vividly as though the scene lay before his eyes. Gray dawn in the gray-walled Sicilian village, high on the mountain top. Gray dawn of Easter, above the sleeping hamlet. One figure half hidden by the abutting angle of the stone houses, the only human being abroad. One figure,--a man, guitar in hand, singing that mad love song beneath the casement of the woman he had won--lost--and wrongfully won again. Turiddu, the returned soldier, serenading Lola, fickle wife of Alfio, the absent teamster; Alfio under whose knife-thrust Turiddu was destined to fall, before the yet unrisen sun should stand at high noon above their sordid little village world. And, contemptuous of his half-foreseen fate, the wooer was singing to the woman whose love was to bring him death.