town gate,
in the sun, and swoon for ever unconscious. Living was almost too
great a demand on her. His yellow, luminous eyes watched her and
enveloped her. There was nothing for her but to yield, yield, yield.
And yet she could not sink to earth.

She saw Pancrazio carrying the skins to the little cart, which was
tilted up under a small, pale-stemmed tree on the platform above the
valley. Then she saw him making his way quickly back through the
crowd, to rejoin them.

"Did you feel something?" said Ciccio.

"Yes--here--!" she said, pressing her hand on her side as the
sensation trilled once more upon her consciousness. She looked at
him with remote, frightened eyes.

"That's good--" he said, his eyes full of a triumphant,
incommunicable meaning.

"Well!--And now," said Pancrazio, coming up, "shall we go and eat
something?"

They jogged home in the little flat cart in the wintry afternoon. It
was almost night before they had got the ass untackled from the
shafts, at the wild lonely house where Pancrazio left the cart.
Giovanni was there with the lantern. Ciccio went on ahead with
Alvina, whilst the others stood to load up the ass by the high-way.

Ciccio watched Alvina carefully. When they were over the river, and
among the dark scrub, he took her in his arms and kissed her with
long, terrible passion. She saw the snow-ridges flare with evening,
beyond his cheek. They had glowed dawn as she crossed the river
outwards, they were white-fiery now in the dusk sky as she returned.
What strange valley of shadow was she threading? What was the
terrible man's passion that haunted her like a dark angel? Why was
she so much beyond herself?

CHAPTER XVI

SUSPENSE

Christmas was at hand. There was a heap of maize cobs still
unstripped. Alvina sat with Ciccio stripping them, in the
corn-place.

"Will you be able to stop here till the baby is born?" he asked her.

She watched the films of the leaves come off from the burning gold
maize cob under his fingers, the long, ruddy cone of fruition. The
heap of maize on one side burned like hot sunshine, she felt it
really gave off warmth, it glowed, it burned. On the other side the
filmy, crackly, sere sheaths were also faintly sunny. Again and
again the long, red-gold, full ear of corn came clear in his hands,
and was put gently aside. He looked up at her, with his yellow eyes.

"Yes, I think so," she said. "Will you?"

"Yes, if they let me. I should like it to