“Yesterday.... What did I do yesterday...? Oh! I remember. Alberto Sanna came to see me.”
“He ... comes ... often ... to see you ... does he not?”
“He is my cousin,” she replied, coldly.
Another halt in the conversation. He went on, mechanically fingering the gloves he had not put on. Lucia unwound a cord of the silken fringe of the low chair in which, with face upturned, she was lying.
“Shall I give you your history lesson to-day?”
“No. History is useless, like everything else.”
“Are you too sad?”
“I’m not even sad—I’m indifferent. I do not care to think.”
“So that—forgive me for mentioning it—I must not hope for a letter from you to-morrow?”
“I don’t know ... I don’t think I shall be able to write.”