"Oh, no! You would never do that," murmured Isidoro appealingly. "You are too good a Christian."
"No; I would never do that," repeated Costantino mechanically.
"Never in the world; you are far too good a Christian." The old man said it again, but without conviction. The experience of a long life was battling with the tenets of his simple faith.
"If he does not do it," he sighed to himself, "it will not be merely because he is a good Christian."
[CHAPTER XVII]
The July evening fell softly, tranquilly, like a bluish veil. Costantino, seated on the stone bench outside the fisherman's hut, was thoughtfully counting on his fingers.
Yes; it had been sixty-four days since his return. Six-ty-four days! It seemed like yesterday, and—it seemed like a century! The exile's fustian coat had grown worn and shabby; his face, dark and gloomy; and his heart—yes, his heart as well, had worn away from day to day, from hour to hour. Eaten into by misery, by rage and passion, it, too, had turned black, like a thing on the verge of decay.
A habit of dissembling, a result of prison life, had clung to him; so that now he found it impossible to be really open with any one, much as he sometimes longed to unburden his heart; while the constant effort to conceal his feelings harassed him and added to his general misery. A frozen void seemed to surround him, like a great sea, calm, but boundless, stretching away in all directions from a shipwrecked mariner. For two months now he had been swimming in this sea, and he was wearied out; his forces were spent. Scan the horizon as he would, his soul could espy no friendly shore across that bleak and desolate expanse; no prospect of an end to the unequal struggle; the icy water and the measureless void were slowly swallowing him up.
Every day he would talk of going away, but nothing more. It was a pretence, like all else that he did; in his heart he knew perfectly well that now he would never go. Why should he? On this side of the water, or on that, life would always be the same. He cared for no one; he hated no one, and he felt that he had become as base and self-centred as his late comrades in prison. Even Uncle Isidoro, who had meant so much to him at a distance, now, in the close companionship of daily intercourse, had become an object of indifference, at times almost of dislike.