Maria could have cried out too, or laughed, or burst into tears from sheer relief. Montalto had unconsciously received one of those happy inspirations which turn the mingling currents of meeting lives; and Leone was already astride of a stick, prancing round the room on an imaginary horse, shouting out the tune of the Italian royal march and sabring the air to right and left with the first thing he happened to pick up. It chanced to be the tooth-brush with which he had been polishing his tin gun.
Montalto looked pleased, and Leone pranced towards him on the stick and pretended to rein in a fiery steed before his papa, saluting with the tooth-brush sabre in correct cavalry fashion.
‘Viva Papa!’ he bawled. ‘Viva Papa!’
Montalto, who rarely smiled, could not help laughing now. Maria could hardly believe her senses, for she had dreaded most of all moments the one in which the two were to meet. But now her husband suddenly looked younger. He was thin, indeed, to the verge of emaciation, his hands were shrunken and transparent, his beard was quite grey, his eyes were hollow; but there was no feverish fire in them, his face was not colourless, and there was life in his movements. Maria wondered whether it were humanly possible that he should not only be kind to her child but should actually like him, and perhaps love him some day.
At all events what had happened had made it easier for her than she had dared to expect, and though nothing could efface the painful impression of her meeting with him, what had now taken place certainly made a great difference.
During dinner he talked quietly about Rome and politics and old friends, and if she saw his eyes fixed upon her now and then with an expression that made her nervous, there was still the broad table between them, and he looked away almost directly.
Afterwards he smoked Spanish cigarettes, taking them to pieces and rolling them again in thin French paper, and he went on talking; but as the hour advanced he said less and less, and his cigarette went out very often, till at last he rose, saying that it was late, and he kissed her hand ceremoniously and left her.
‘Good-night,’ she said, just before he disappeared through the door.
He bent his head a little but did not answer.
An hour later she had dismissed her maid and sat in a small easy-chair in her boudoir under a shaded light; she was trying to read, in the hope of growing sleepy. She wore a thin silk dressing-gown, wide open at the throat and showing a little simple white lace; her dark hair was taken up in a loose knot rather low down at the back of her neck, as she had always done it at bedtime ever since she had been a young girl. Her bare feet were half hidden in a pair of rather shabby little grey velvet slippers without heel or heel-piece, for the spring night was warm. She was trying to read.