"What are you reading, Tullio?" asked Juliana, turning and taking from my hands the book, which she closed and replaced on her knees with a sort of nervous impatience.
And immediately, without pause, as if to remove all significance from her action, she added:
"Why do we not rejoin Miss Edith and have a little music? Do you hear her? She is playing, I think, the Funeral March for the Death of a Hero, which you are so fond of, Federico...."
She listened. We all three listened. We heard several chords in the silence. She was not mistaken. Rising, she added:
"Well, come. Will you?"
I rose last, so to have her before me. She did not take the trouble to shake from her dress the elm flowers that had formed a soft carpet on the ground all around.
She stood still a minute, her head bent, regarding the layer of flowers which she hollowed out and piled up with the slender tip of her shoe, while on her, other flowers, and still other flowers, continued to rain, to rain ceaselessly. I could see nothing of her face. Was she really so attentive to that trifling action? Or was she not rather absorbed in perplexity?
V.
The following morning, among those who brought Easter offerings to the Badiola, came Calisto, old Calisto, the keeper at the Lilacs, with an enormous bouquet of fresh and odorous lilacs. He wanted to offer them to Juliana with his own hands, recalling to her the happy time of our stay there, and begging for another visit, a short visit. "Signora had seemed so gay, so happy over there. Why did she not return? The house had remained intact; nothing had been changed. The garden was now more filled. The lilac-trees, a veritable forest, were in full bloom. Did not their perfume reach as far as the Badiola, toward evening? Really, the garden and the house expected a visit. Beneath the roof all the old nests were full of swallows. In deference to Signora's wish, these nests had been respected as if sacred. But, assuredly, there were too many now. Every week they were obliged to clean up the balconies and window-sills with a shovel. And what a warbling, from morning till night! When will Signora decide to come? Soon?"
"Shall we go there on Tuesday?" I asked Juliana.