a soldier you thought I would never come back? Kiss me as you did
then, mamma, for to-morrow I am going away again."

Before daybreak he took his knife from the place in the haymow where he
had hidden it when he went soldiering, and went out to meet Alfio.

"Holy Mother of Jesus!" grumbled Lola when her husband prepared to go
out; "where are you going in such a hurry?"

"I am going far away," answered Alfio, "and it will be better for you
if I never come back!"

The two men met on the highway and for a while walked on in silence.
Turiddu kept his cap pulled down over his face. "Neighbor Alfio," he
said after a space, "as true as I live I know that I have wronged you,
and I would let myself be killed if I had not seen my old mother when
she got up on the pretext of looking after the hens. And now, as true
as I live, I will kill you like a dog so that my dear old mother may
not have cause to weep."

"Good!" answered Alfio; "we will both strike hard!" And he took off his
coat.

Both were good with the knife. Turiddu received the first blow in his
arm, and when he returned it struck for Alfio's heart.

"Ah, Turiddu! You really do intend to kill me?"

"Yes, I told you so. Since I saw her in the henyard I have my old
mother always in my eyes."

"Keep those eyes wide open," shouted Alfio, "for I am going to return
you good measure!"

Alfio crouched almost to the ground, keeping his left hand on the
wound, which pained him. Suddenly he seized a handful of dust and threw
it into Turiddu's eyes.

"Ah!" howled Turiddu, blinded by the dust, "I'm a dead man!" He
attempted to save himself by leaping backward, but Alfio struck him a
second blow, this time in the belly, and a third in the throat.

"That makes three--the last for the head you have adorned for me!"

Turiddu staggered back into the bushes and fell. He tried to say, "Ah,
my dear mother!" but the blood gurgled up in his throat and he could
not.

Music lends itself incalculably better to the celebration of a mood
accomplished or achieved by action, physical or psychological, than to
an expression of the action itself. It is in the nature of the lyric
drama that this should be so, and there need be no wonder that wherever
Verga offered an opportunity for set lyricism it was embraced by
Mascagni and his librettists. Verga tells us that Turiddu, having lost
Lola, comforted himself by singing spiteful songs under her window.
This suggested the Siciliano, wh