"Margherita loves me," he thought; "perhaps she loves me as Nonna loved her husband. Her family will scorn and drive me away, but she will say, 'I'll wait for you. I will love you always.' That's what she will say; but what shall I be able to promise her? My career is destroyed."
Another hope, not to be confessed, was, however, fermenting in the bottom of his heart: that Olì would make her escape. He dared not reveal this hope clearly to himself, but he felt it, felt it; in spite of himself it ran in his blood like a drop of poison. He was ashamed of it; he understood its meanness, but it was impossible to drive it away.
At the moment when he had cried, "I will kill you, I will kill myself," he had meant what he said, but now the words, the whole scene felt like some horrible nightmare. As he saw again the landscape, the street, which three days ago, he had seen with so much gladness in his soul, as he approached Nuoro, the sense of present reality pressed upon him more and more tightly.
The moment he arrived at home he looked for the amulet; and possessed by the superstition that things prearranged do not come to pass, he wrapped it up in a coloured handkerchief. Then he remembered that the sad occurrences of these few days he had always foreseen and expected, and he was vexed by his own childishness.
"And why should I send the rezetta at all? Why should I want to please her?"
He tossed the little packet against the wall, then picked it up again, softening. "For Aunt Grathia," he thought.
Then he told himself, "At four o'clock I will go to Signor Carboni and tell him the whole thing. I must get it over this very day. Margherita! Margherita! Suppose I see her to-night instead? She will bid me say nothing to her father. She will tell me to wait—to go on as usual. No, I won't be such a coward. At four o'clock I will go to Signor Carboni."
At the determined hour he did indeed pass the door of Margherita's home, but he could not bring himself to stop, to ring. He passed by; despising himself, thinking he would return later; convinced at bottom that never would he succeed in addressing his godfather.
Two days, two nights, he wasted thus in a vain battle of thoughts, which changed and dissolved like agitated waves. He had altered nothing in his habits or daily life. He read with young students, he studied, he ate, he lingered under Margherita's window, and if he saw her, he gazed at her passionately. But at night Aunt Tatàna heard him tramp about his room, descend to the court, go out, return, wander hither and thither. He seemed a soul in torment, and the kind woman feared he was ill.
What was he expecting? What did he hope?