As he paced up and down there by the sea, a hundred confused images and impressions came floating back out of that past to Dino. His father's face, and the unforgotten sound of his voice,—Sor Checco, Gasparo, Drea, dear old Valdez, and those men at the café to-night, and the scene this morning at the office, and the scene at the banquet, that other night, long ago,—how long ago it seemed! It was as if some storm-wave breaking over his life and soul had stirred the very depths of old remembrance, until he could scarcely distinguish the actual from the past, the living from the dead. They were all mixed up with the darkness and the wind and the sense of the restless seething water about him.
When he thought of Italia he stopped short. He could not, he would not think of Italia—not then. He could bear nothing further to-night, he told himself, with a curious sense of relief and quiet. The measure was full; he could realise nothing more. And, indeed, beyond great pain as beyond great joy, there is this mysterious region of rest. Great passions end in calm, as the two poles are surrounded by similar spaces of silent, ice-locked sea.
CHAPTER VI.
THE MORNING AFTER.
A woman's anxiety is always awake, always asking. She entreats to know in direct proportion to her dread of the coming knowledge. How could it well be otherwise, while her life is one frail tissue of delicate probabilities, in the midst of which she waits, like a spider in its net, for the possible gifts of fate? And the web may glisten as it will in the sunlight; it makes but a poor shield against a blow.
As Catarina busied herself about her ordinary household work that next morning there were faint new lines of care about her close shut mouth, and the orbits of her eyes were darkened as if with sleeplessness and long watching. But, whatever had troubled her, she made no direct mention of it to Dino,—setting his belated breakfast before him carefully but in silence. It was not until he pushed aside his plate and stood up, reaching mechanically for his hat, ready to go out, that she admitted to herself that if she wanted an explanation she must ask for it; or seemed to notice his movements, and even then it was only to say indifferently,
'Shall you be home to dinner? Or do you mean to stay at Drea's? is that a part of your new arrangements?'
'Nay, but, mother, I am sorry to have given you so much more trouble. The fact is I—I over-slept myself this morning. When I came in last night I was more tired than I knew,' said Dino cheerfully.
'Ay, when you came in! When you did come! It was after ten o'clock when you brought home that blessed child, so worn out with the wind and what not that she fell asleep on my knee, bless her little heart! before I had fairly time to get her clothes off. And after that I sat up for three hours in that chair, Dino. It was striking one by the Duomo clock before I went to bed.'