She felt herself quite alone, this austere and self-contained woman—alone in a world which could never change for the better now; in which each new morning would only bring new deprivations in place of fresh joys.
*****
Dino had dressed himself in workman's clothes that morning. Drea did not expect him yet, but it was just possible there might be something which wanted doing in the boat. It was such a bright fresh morning after the storm; a morning to make young hearts beat lightly and young blood run fast with a quick sense and joy of dear life. But as he turned mechanically down the busy Via Grande he saw nothing of all this. His mother's words, the way in which she had taken it for granted that if he loved Italia, Italia must love him, and how there could be but one possible solution to their lives, all that would have been so natural, so full of hope and radiant happiness last month, last week—last week? only yesterday, only one day ago! And now; oh, the bitter irony of fate! it was he himself who had forged the chain which bound him. He cursed his own folly. Why could he not have been contented? was he not deeply enough involved before then? why could he not have let that last crowning piece of madness alone?
The look of the commonplace crowd around him, the presence of those scores of hurrying, interested, contented, busy men, the very look of the shop windows, all things seemed to conspire together to discredit and ridicule the devoted side, the dramatic side, the only possible side, of his situation. In a world like this—a world of common-sense and convenience and keen enjoyments, a world of sunlight and youth and possibilities, to choose deliberately, at four-and-twenty, to throw away all one's future, all one's love, all one's life in doing—that. Damn it! Even to himself he would never mention that accursed plan, he would never think of it.
He thrust his hands deeper into the great pockets of his rough jacket, and threw up his head defiantly, as he glanced about him. And each house he passed, each soldier, each policeman, each lamp-post even—every visible sign of peace and law and order—seemed a tangible ironical comment on his folly. And why, in God's name, had he done this thing? He remembered so well that evening—it was after their demonstration had been dispersed by the police, and he was hot with a sense of battle, and wild with excitement, with bitter baffled indignation. It had seemed so easy a thing then to pledge away his future. He had done it without consulting Valdez—suddenly, madly, on the desperate impulse of the moment. He had done it in a moment of mental crisis; because he was imaginative, because he believed in the cause, heart and soul, because he had been a fool. And as he said that to himself some old words of Pietro Valdez came back to him with sudden force out of some old forgotten talk of theirs. 'How can any one believe in your highest emotions?' he heard the familiar voice asking him, 'how can you expect any one to believe in your highest emotions if you question them yourself?'
The softest wind blew in his face and he did not feel it, the sunlight rested on him, the sky was blue and white; but he had ceased to look even at the passers-by. He felt like a man awakened from a dream, when a hand touched him, and a voice spoke in his ear, and he looked up and recognised the Marchese Gasparo.
'Hallo, old boy, are you asleep? are you dreaming? what the devil is the matter with you?'
They had met in front of the Giappone, the fashionable restaurant of Leghorn, where Gasparo had been breakfasting with a couple of his friends. The two other men strolled off a few paces and waited, smoking their long thin cigars, and eyeing Dino with a languid curiosity. Gasparo, too, looked at his altered dress with some exclamation of surprise.
'What is the meaning of that new toggery?' he demanded. 'I had to look twice to make sure it was you. What are you up to now, old fellow, eh? Is all that to oblige our good Andrea?' And then, without waiting for an answer: 'See here, Dino, you're the very man I want. But stop a moment. First of all, are you going anywhere in particular?'
'I am going to Drea's,' Dino said.