Then Italia lifted up her head.
'Dino is not faithless,' she said gently.
'Girl, no one believes in him. Not a soul. Not even the young master—and they were boys together.'
'I do, I believe in him, father.'
She knelt with clasped hands gazing at the fire, and all the ardour and devotion of her impassioned soul sounded in her soft girlish voice. For the moment she felt superior to all suffering, uplifted to a region of feeling which knows neither lassitude nor reluctant pain. And such love makes all things easy; it floods dry places; it drowns the slime and weeds. It is good, no doubt, to be strong; it is wiser to be the master of our fortunes than their slave. The truth is obvious enough. But we are not all strong, God knows; let us still be thankful for that divine gift of pity,—tender and loving pity,—the heritage of the outcast; that last possession of the disinherited, of the unsuccessful; who, owning this, shall yet know something, even on this earth, of the very kingdom of heaven.
After a while she rose to her feet; she laid her gentle hand upon the old man's shoulder. 'Come, father. Come to your supper. You are so tired, dear; you must let me take care of you. For the harder things are, father, the more we will need each other's love,' Italia said.
CHAPTER IX.
WITH VALDEZ.
The sun was not more than half an hour high in the east when Valdez and Dino started in their boat to row up the disused canal to Pisa. It was a mild gray morning. A pearly-tinted scirocco sky hung low above the flat country beyond Leghorn; on either side were stretches of bare ploughed land; the only colour was in the thick fringe of tall yellow reeds which bordered the canal, and on the scarlet-stained leaves of the water plants and brambles which had survived the winter, hidden deep under the faded bents of last year's grass, in sheltered nooks below the overhanging banks.