He had been born amidst the forests that deck the seaward side of Etna, and the fires of the mountain were in his blood and in his soul. He had been always taught from childhood that a just vengeance was a holy thing;—that women might sit down and weep, but that men should scorch their tears up with a dagger's flash and the smoke of blood justly shed.
All these days he had been saying always to himself, 'Who is the coward that has left her alone? Who is the beast that has forsaken her?' and thinking and thinking, thus perpetually, of one thing he had come slowly to put together this and that, and to divine that her lover had been the companion of Saturnino, the man of late set free by the same law which had condemned him.
But he was not sure.
No tortures would have forced the lips of Musa to speak Este's name.
They might have done with her what they would. She had the temper of Greek Læna in her. She would never have spoken.
He let her go away from him along the sad sea-shore with the strewn weeds steaming in the torrid sun; then with a few long
