After the boys had gone to bed he sat and talked to me. He was curiously attractive and curiously beautiful, but somehow like stone in his clear colouring and his clear-cut face. His temples, with the black hair, were distinct and fine as a work of art.
But always his eyes had this strange, half-diabolic, half-tortured pale gleam, like a goat's, and his mouth was shut almost uglily, his cheeks stern. His moustache was brown, his teeth strong and spaced. The women said it was a pity his moustache was brown.
'Peccato!—sa, per bellezza, i baffi neri—ah-h!'
Then a long-drawn exclamation of voluptuous appreciation.
'You live quite alone?' I said to him.
He did. And even when he had been ill he was alone. He had been ill two years before. His cheeks seemed to harden like marble and to become pale at the thought. He was afraid, like marble with fear.
'But why,' I said, 'why do you live alone? You are sad—è triste.'
He looked at me with his queer, pale eyes. I felt a great static misery in him, something very strange.
'Triste!' he repeated, stiffening up, hostile. I could not understand.
'Vuol' dire che hai l'aria dolorosa,' cried Maria, like a chorus interpreting. And there was always a sort of loud ring of challenge somewhere in her voice.