irens' Isle. Mechanically he swam through it, scarcely moving his arms,
with his chin low in the water--out towards the horizon-line.

He was swimming towards Africa.

Presently that thought came into his mind, that he was swimming towards
Africa and Hermione, and away from Maddalena. It seemed to him, then, as
if the two women on the opposite shores of this sea must know, Hermione
that he was coming to her, Maddalena that he was abandoning her, and he
began to think of them both as intent upon his journey, the one feeling
him approach, the other feeling him recede. He swam more slowly. A
curious melancholy had overtaken him, a deep depression of the spirit,
such as often alternates in the Sicilian character with the lively gayety
that is sent down upon its children by the sun. This lonely progress in
the sea was prophetic. He must leave Maddalena. His friendship with her
must come to an end, and soon. Hermione would return, and then, in no
long time, they would leave the Casa del Prete and go back to England.
They would settle down somewhere, probably in London, and he would take
up his work with his father, and the Sicilian dream would be over.

The vapors that hid the sky seemed to drop a little lower down towards
the sea, as if they were going to enclose him.

The Sicilian dream would be over. Was that possible? He felt as if the
earth of Sicily would not let him go, as if, should the earth resign him,
the sea of Sicily would keep him. He dwelt on this last fancy, this
keeping of him by the sea. That would be strange, a quiet end to all
things. Never before had he consciously contemplated his own death. The
deep melancholy poured into him by sirocco caused him to do so now.
Almost voluptuously he thought of death, a death in the sea of Sicily
near the rocks of the isle of the sirens. The light would be kindled in
the sirens' house and his eyes would not see it. They would be closed by
the cold fingers of the sea. And Maddalena? The first time she had seen
him she had seen him sinking in the sea. How strange if it should be so
at the end, if the last time she saw him she saw him sinking in the sea.
She had cried out. Would she cry out again or would she keep silence? He
wondered. For a moment he felt as if it were ordained that thus he should
die, and he let his body sink in the water, throwing up his hands. He
went down, very far down, but he felt that Maddalena's eyes followed him
and that in them he saw terrors