"Quite sure, I tell you. That was certainly she."
"I have seen her!" he repeated, holding his head with his hands, furious with himself that he had been so stupidly deceived; that he had sought his mother beyond the mountains and the seas, while she was trailing her dishonour and her wretchedness close to his side; that he had been so moved by strangers, yet had felt no heart beat upon seeing the face of that beggar, that living misery, framed by the gloomy window of the Cantoniera.
What then was man? What the human heart? What was life, intelligence, thought?
Ah yes! now he could answer these questions which so often had risen idly to his lips! Now that Destiny was beating with inexorable, funereal wings, shaking all things with sudden storm, now at last he knew what man was, what life, what the human heart! Deceit! deceit! deceit!
Aunt Grathia pushed a stool to Anania and made the unhappy lad sit down. Then she crouched beside him, took his hand, and long watched him compassionately.
"How cold you are, my child!" said the widow, pressing his hand. "Cry, my son. It will do you good."
Anania escaped from the grip of the hard, old fingers.
"I'm not a child!" he said irritated. "Why should I cry?"
"It would do you good, son! Oh yes, I know how much good it does one to weep. When the knock came to my door that terrible night, and a voice, which seemed the voice of Death himself, said to me, 'Woman, wait no longer,' I became a stone. For hours and hours I could not weep; and they were the worst of all hours for me. My heart in my breast had become red hot iron; it was burning me, burning me inside, tearing my breast with its sharp point. Then the Lord granted me tears, and the tears refreshed me in my grief as dew refreshes the rocks burnt by the sun. Have patience, my child. We are born to suffer, and what is this distress of yours in comparison with so many other sorrows?"
"But I am not suffering!" he protested. "I ought to have expected this. I was expecting it. I felt myself forced to come here by a mysterious power. A voice said to me, 'Go, go. You'll learn something there.' It's a blow of course. I was surprised—but that's all over. Never mind."