So he left the room a second time, his heart full of pity for the wretched girl, the more so, as he had found her so readily responsive to his appeal to duty.
"Poor child!" he repeated. "Poor, poor child!"
He returned to the Lido and lunched with his wife, but was silent and preoccupied. The Signora, accustomed to these moods of her husband's, when his patients caused him anxiety, forbore to question him. When he had finished eating, he lit his toscano, and walked up and down the long terrace of the hotel, his brows knit, his hands joined behind his back; finally he rejoined his wife in her room, whither she had retired for the siesta. She raised her head from the pillow, as he entered, and put down the novel she had been reading.
"Ebbene, Rico?" she asked.
"Virginia mia, I am worried about a patient of mine, a girl who is in great trouble—and I don't know what to do to help her!"
"Ragna Andersen?" she asked quietly.
"How did you guess?"
"My dear man, you are so hopelessly transparent! Besides, I am not blind—a look at her face this morning would have been enough for anybody."
"The fact is, Virginia, I don't know what to do about it."
"Can't she go home?"