I
"Then why did you come here?" asked Vincent.
"Because your mother asked me," said Angelica.
Vincent shook his head.
"I don’t believe you," he said. "You’ve got something up your sleeve. I know you! All your moves are calculated."
He turned away from her and began to walk up and down the piazza, where they had encountered each other quite alone, that early Sunday morning.
"No!" he insisted. "It’s something to do with me. One of your damned Italian schemes!"
"It’s nothing to do with you," said Angelica steadily. "Nothing at all. I don’t bother myself about you any more."
He stopped directly in front of her and looked into her face with the vicious, sneering laugh she had once so dreaded; but now it troubled her not at all. She regarded him as a trained nurse might look at a troublesome patient, perfectly self-possessed and assured in her white linen frock and her trim hair.
It filled him with rage and hatred to see her so. He felt an uncontrollable wish to insult her, to talk to her outrageously, to force her to abandon this calmness, this superiority.