He took a knife out of his pocket, and picking up the pencil began to sharpen it while she sat watching him, her dark eyes full and bright with such an expression of unquestioning content as one is not accustomed to expect on faces which have outgrown their first childish calm. The water of the canal was as blue that morning as the stainless sky which it reflected, and it seemed almost as still; only now and then the faintest ripple breaking against the step with a weak splash and stir which made the sunbeams sparkle under the wooden platform. Beyond the dark archway of the bridge the white-sailed boats came and went; her glance followed their movement with a vague sense of happy peace. She was realising for the first time the ideal of all loving-natured women: she was feeling her happiness depend upon the will of the man she trusted. When Dino looked up at her inquiringly she started, as if indeed awakened from a dream.
'Have you understood? Is that plain enough? Oh, Italia! Italia! for shame! Is that the way to treat a learned professor? You have not been looking at the book after all,' he said laughing, but shaking his head with mock severity.
The colour rushed back to her cheeks. 'Oh! I am so sorry, Dino; I forgot.'
'Now, if I were your father I should tell you that one does not carry flowers to the mill when what one wants is bread; and the quickest way to become an arithmetician is not to sit watching for the boat. By the way, speaking of the boat, Sor Drea must have gone out early this morning.'
'Yes; he went at daybreak; he woke me up to tell me he was going. He took Maso with him to help with the nets.'
'Ah! I wish I had known,' said Dino quickly.
'Father thought of going for you; then he said you would be tired—you had a hard day yesterday. And Sora Catarina would not know yet of your arrangement; she would have been frightened if you had been fetched away suddenly in the middle of the night.'
She glanced quickly at him, and added, 'I am glad they did not go for you; you look so tired this morning, Dino, as if you had not slept.'
'I did not sleep—much,' he said absently.
He threw his arm up and laid his head against it. His face was almost on a level now with the blue ripple of the water. There was a handful of loose straw floating about among the piles: he watched it come and go as the current sucked in under the landing-stage. What was the good of thinking—of remembering? Why had Italia alluded to last night? Was he never to forget it for five minutes?