“Oh yes!” she whispered, with a contemptuous mouth. “Oh yes!—because you like him! But you know nothing of him—nothing. How can you like him, not knowing him? He may be a real bad character. How would you like him then?”
“He isn’t, is he?” said Alvina.
“I don’t know. I don’t know. He may be. Even I, I don’t know him—no, though he has been with me for three years. What is he? He is a man of the people, a boatman, a labourer, an artist’s model. He sticks to nothing—”
“How old is he?” asked Alvina.
“He is twenty-five—a boy only. And you? You are older.”
“Thirty,” confessed Alvina.
“Thirty! Well now—so much difference! How can you trust him? How can you? Why does he want to marry you—why?”
“I don’t know—” said Alvina.
“No, and I don’t know. But I know something of these Italian men, who are labourers in every country, just labourers and under-men always, always down, down, down—” And Madame pressed her spread palms downwards. “And so—when they have a chance to come up—” she raised her hand with a spring—“they are very conceited, and they take their chance. He will want to rise, by you, and you will go down, with him. That is how it is. I have seen it before—yes—more than one time—”
“But,” said Alvina, laughing ruefully. “He can’t rise much because of me, can he?”