"Well?" I asked, turning abruptly toward the old man.
I thought I saw a shadow pass over his forehead.
"It is a perfectly healthy heart," he hastened to answer. "It only needs blood ... and quiet. Come! Come! Be brave! How is your appetite to-day?"
The invalid made a movement of the lips expressive of disgust. Her eyes were fixed on the open window, through which entered the warm sunlight.
"It is cold to-day, is it not?" she asked timidly, putting her hands beneath the bed-covers.
One could see that she was shivering.
XXXVII.
The following day Federico and I paid a visit to Giovanni di Scordio. It was the last afternoon of November. We went on foot, crossing the tilled fields.
We walked along silent and thoughtful. The sun slowly set on the horizon. An impalpable golden dust floated above our heads in the quiet air. The humid earth had a vigorous, brown color, an aspect of tranquil energy, and, so to speak, a peaceful consciousness of its virtue. From the furrows mounted a visible breath, like that exhaled from the nostrils of cattle. Beneath the soft light the white objects took on an extraordinary whiteness, a snowlike purity. A cow in the distance, a plowman's shirt, a stretched sheet, the walls of a farm-house, shone like under the light of the full moon.
"You are sad," said Federico to me, gently.