“The Italians were very good to me—they were good and honourable to me. From Bozen to Rome, almost every night I had a meal and a bed, perhaps of straw, with some peasant. I love the Italian people, with all my heart.
“Dunque, adesso—maintenant—I earn a thousand pounds in a year, or I earn two thousand—”
He looked down at the ground, his voice tailing off into silence.
Gudrun looked at his fine, thin, shiny skin, reddish-brown from the sun, drawn tight over his full temples; and at his thin hair—and at the thick, coarse, brush-like moustache, cut short about his mobile, rather shapeless mouth.
“How old are you?” she asked.
He looked up at her with his full, elfin eyes startled.
“Wie alt?” he repeated. And he hesitated. It was evidently one of his reticencies.
“How old are you?” he replied, without answering.
“I am twenty-six,” she answered.
“Twenty-six,” he repeated, looking into her eyes. He paused. Then he said: