"Where are you going, beauty?" he asked.
"I am going to the fountain."
"May I come with you?"
"Come, Nania."
He went. They walked together by the road high up on the shoulder of the valley in whose depth night was waiting, waiting till the purple should fade in the heavens and veils of shadow should fall upon all things. Together they descended to the fountain. Margherita set the amphora under the silver stream of gurgling water, and immediately it changed its tone to one of merriment, as if the descent into the jug had agreeably interrupted the eternal tedium. The two young things sat on a stone bench before the fountain, and they talked of love. The amphora filled, the water overflowed, and for some moments was quite silent as if listening to the lovers. And now the sky was grey and the veils of shadow had fallen on the higher peaks, the more luminous folds of the mountains. And as night enwrapped the valleys, the desire of Anania waxed bolder. He put his arm round the girl's waist, she laid her head on his shoulder, and he kissed her.
At this time Anania was seventeen. He had no friends and mixed little with his schoolfellows. He was painfully conscious of the stain upon his birth. Once overhearing the remark, "If I were he, I would not stay with my father," he fancied the words must refer to himself.
"That's it!" he thought; "why am I here with this man who betrayed my mother and flung her into a bad life? I don't exactly love him, and I certainly don't hate him, but what I ought is to despise him. He is not wicked; he's not completely trivial like the majority of our neighbours. Sometimes I feel quite fond of him, when I hear his simple talk about treasure hunting, when I see his respectful affection for his elderly wife, his unchanging fidelity to his master. But I ought to despise him! I wish to despise him! What claim has he on me? Did I ask him to bring me into the world? I ought certainly to leave him now I understand——"
But gratitude, affection, much confidence, bound him to Aunt Tatàna. She lived almost exclusively for him. She adored him, though she had not succeeded in making him what she would have liked, a pious and obedient boy, reverent of God and the king and the priests. She saw, alas I that he was wrong-headed and self-sufficient, but she loved him none the less. She laughed and jested with him; she taught him to dance; she amused him with all the gossip of the place. Every morning before he was up she brought him a cup of coffee. Every Sunday she promised him money if he would go to mass.
"I'm too sleepy," he would say. "I worked so hard last night."
"Go later," she would insist. Anania did not go, but Aunt Tatàna gave him the money all the same.