“You are as odious as you are wicked. I cannot bear you; go away.”
She dropped his arm, as if in horror. Alberto sniggered at Andrea’s sudden discomfiture.
“Oh! poor Andrea, didn’t you know that Lucia was a humanitarian?”
“I did not know it,” he replied, gravely.
“Oh! my heart is full of love for the disinherited of life; for the poor, down-trodden ones; for the pariahs of this cruel world. I love them deeply, warmly; my heart burns with love for them.”
Andrea felt pained. He felt the weakness of Lucia’s argument, but dared not prove it to her: he felt the predominance she usurped in conversation and over those who approached her, and shrank from it as from a danger. When she had leant on his arm he had throbbed, in every vein, with a full and exquisite pleasure. When she had dropped it, he had experienced a strange loneliness, he had felt himself shrink into something poorer and weaker, and was almost tempted to feel his arm, so that he might revive the sensation of the hand that had been withdrawn. Now Alberto was laughing at him, and that irritated him beyond measure.... That little Alberto, a being as stupid as he appeared innocuous, was capable of biting, when the spirit moved him. He could be poisonous, when he chose, the consumptive insect! Why shouldn’t he crush his head against the wall? Andrea took off his light grey hat and fanned his face to disperse the mist of blind rage that clouded his brain. All three pursued their walk in silence, as if isolated by their own thoughts. The embarrassing silence prolonged itself. Alberto had an idea.
“Make peace with Andrea, Lucia.”
“No; he is a bad-hearted egotist.”
“Via, make it up. Don’t you see he is sorry?”
“Are you sorry for what you said just now, Signor Andrea?”