She fell back on her seat and searched among the flowers and books in front of her for something to distract herself, a volume or a time-table. Then she leaned her head against the arm of the seat, and closed her eyes in an endeavour not to think, to suppress the subtle and voracious work of the jealousy which caused her to think.
“We are off at last,” said Marco, entering the compartment.
Heavily the train started, leaving the shadow of the gloomy station, and began to run among the green meadows completely covered with flowers, which stretched beneath the mountains around Mont Cenis.
“We are returning home, little Vittoria; we are returning to our own house, to our own bed, where no one else has slept the night before, and where no stranger will sleep the night after. Home, home; no more hotels, no more restaurants where the cooking is of an unknown provision and quantity. I assure you, my dear, that at Casa Fiore there is an excellent cook, whose kitchen presents no mysteries. What a pleasure to dine and sleep in the house of the Fiore in via Bocca di Leone!”
Vittoria listened attentively to Marco’s tirade, with its forced gaiety, where a little irritation was pressing.
“This journey has tired you, Marco?” she asked, as if she had noticed something of no importance.
“Physically, perhaps,” he replied quickly; “I am not so young as I was.”
“You are thirty-two.”
“But I have lived far more than my years,” he replied, with candour.
“That is true,” she replied calmly; “instead of travelling we could have gone to Spello.”