“She is asleep,” she said. “We shall talk of her tomorrow.”
She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with terror and with an almost unbearable feeling of pity. She had observed the change that came over him. He would never understand what he had done; and even to her the whole thing remained incomprehensible. He said with difficulty—
“Give me the book.”
Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn leather cover, the Bible given him ages ago by an Englishman in Palermo.
“The child had to be protected,” he said, in a strange, mournful voice.
Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying without noise. Suddenly she started for the door. He heard her move.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“To the light,” she answered, turning round to look at him balefully.
“The light! Si—duty.”
Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his absorbed quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt for the spectacles given him by Dona Emilia. He put them on. After a long period of immobility he opened the book, and from on high looked through the glasses at the small print in double columns. A rigid, stern expression settled upon his features with a slight frown, as if in response to some gloomy thought or unpleasant sensation. But he never detached his eyes from the book while he swayed forward, gently, gradually, till his snow-white head rested upon the open pages. A wooden clock ticked methodically on the white-washed wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay alone, rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by a treacherous gust of wind.