La Villari's views of life and her manner of dealing with situations were according to Sardou, Dumas, or D'Annunzio. Nino must either find her supine in a darkened room, with etiolated cheeks and blue shadows under her spent eyes; or then, after his arrival, she must enter, coming from some brilliant banquet, rose-crowned and laughing. She sees him! She vacillates. Her jewelled hand clutches at her heart. "Nino!"—and he is at her feet.... Then he makes her a scene of jealousy. Where has she been? With whom? Where was she when his telegram arrived? Who sends her all these flowers? Pah! He throws them out of the window—and all is as it should be.
As it happened, there were no flowers in the room. So La Villari rang the bell and told Teresa to order fifty francs worth of white roses and tuberoses from the florist, to be brought as soon as possible, and the hair-dresser for six o'clock, and the brougham for seven.
"And, Teresa!..."
Teresa turned back with a dreary face.
"Remember that it was you who opened the telegram. I was out. I am always out. With many people, you understand."
Yes, Teresa understood. And with callous back and shuffling shoes she went away to order the flowers, and the brougham, and the hair-dresser.
La Villari unpinned her hair, put the greater part of it neatly on the dressing-table in readiness for the coiffeuse, rubbed a little lanoline round her eyes, and settled herself with Matilde Serao's "Indomani" to one more peaceful afternoon.
Love was not peaceful, it was agitating and uncomfortable; and keeping up the pretence of being twenty-eight when one is forty-five is a labour and a toil. Of course, she adored Nino; the mere thought of his ever tiring of her, or leaving her, brought visions of despair and vengeance, of vitriol and dagger to her mind. But oh! how she envied those placid women who surrender their youth submissively, and slip serenely into gentle middle-age as a ship glides into quiet waters. With her, because her lover was young, she must grasp and grapple with the engulfing years. She must clutch at her youth as a child clutches a wild bird fluttering to escape. Alas! when the child opens its fingers the prisoner is dead. Better let it fly when it will.
So thought Nunziata Villari. The feathers and the wings still lay in her hand, but youth, the bird, was dead.
She took up the book, and stifled thought under the blanket of Matilde Serao's warm prose.