As her physical suffering increased, my mother and I were able, not without great difficulty, to secure her consent to the surgical operation necessitated by her condition. After the operation she was confined to her bed for thirty or forty days and compelled to take the greatest precautions during her convalescence. Already the poor invalid's nerves were extremely weak and irritable. The preparations, long and wearisome, exhausted and exasperated her so much that, more than once, she tried to throw herself out of bed, to revolt, to escape the brutal punishment which violated her, humiliated her, degraded her.
"Tell me," she said to me one day with bitterness, "aren't you disgusted with me when you think of it? Oh, how horrible it is!"
And she made a gesture of repugnance at herself, frowned, then was silent.
Another day as I entered her room she cried:
"Go away, go away, Tullio! Please go away! You can come back when I'm better. If you stay here you'll hate me. I'm odious now, odious—don't look at me."
Sobs choked her. The same day, a few hours later, while I was standing by her bedside in silence, because I thought she was about to doze off, she let fall these obscure words, pronounced with the strange tone of someone speaking in his sleep:
"Yes, really, I did it. It was a good idea——"
"What are you saying, Juliana?"
She did not reply.
"What are you thinking of, Juliana?"