“That is not a great deal; but still it doesn’t matter!” and he broke into a laugh.
She lowered her eyelids, as she always did to hide the trouble of her eyes, and closed her lips to repress her words; but these actions were so imperceptible that the man hardly ever noticed them.
“Aren’t you going to put your flowers in water? don’t you like them?”
“I am just going to,” she replied.
Then very slowly she took the flowers and untied them, almost without looking at them, separating them on the table with a mechanical working of the hands.
“It is eleven,” he said, looking at his watch. “I should like to lie down a little; I am so tired. It is the spring perhaps.”
“Go and sleep; you have an hour and a half before lunch,” Vittoria replied, without turning.
“Aren’t you tired?”
“No, I haven’t been out.”
“That is true. Doesn’t the spring tire you?”