During the whole of the dinner in the Lietis’ apartment in Via Constantinopoli, a certain all-pervading embarrassment was perceptible, despite the care with which it was disguised. Caterina had not dared, for several days, to breathe Lucia’s name. But on Saturday, when she saw that Andrea had quite regained his good temper, she begged him not to go out on the morrow. He at first shrugged his shoulders, as if he did not care one way or the other, and then said, simply:
“I will stay at home: it would be too rude to go out.”
Yet Andrea’s manner was cold when he came in from his walk that day, and Lucia was very nervous, but beautiful, thought Caterina, in her clinging, cashmere gown, with a large bunch of violets under her chin. The talk was frigid. Caterina, who had been driving Giuditta all over the town, was troubled. She feared that Lucia would notice Andrea’s coldness, and was sorry she had invited her. She talked more than usual, addressing herself to Lucia, to Andrea, and to Giuditta, to keep the ball going, making strenuous efforts to put her beloved ones in good humour. For a moment she hoped that dinner would create a diversion, and breathed a sigh of relief when the servant announced, “The Signora is served.”
But even the bright warmth of the room was of no avail. Andrea, at whose side Lucia was seated, attended absently to her wants. He ate and drank a good deal, devouring his food in a silence unusual to him. Lucia hardly ate at all, but drank whole glasses of water just coloured with wine, a liquid of pale amethyst colour. When Andrea addressed her, she listened to him with intent eyes, which never lowered their gaze; his fell before it, and again he applied himself to his dinner. Caterina, who saw that their aversion was increasing, was terrified. She tried to draw Giuditta into the general conversation, but the child was possessed by the taciturn hunger of a school-girl, to whom good food is a delightful anomaly. Towards the end of dinner, there were slight signs of a thaw. Andrea began to chatter as fast as he could and with surprising volubility; talking to the two ladies, to the child, even to himself. Lucia deigned to smile assent two or three times. There was a passage of civilities when the crême méringue made its appearance. Lucia compared it to a flake of immaculate snow; Andrea pronounced the comparison to be as just as it was poetic. Caterina turned from pale to pink in the dawn of so good an understanding. She felt, however, that this was a bad evening for Lucia, one of those evenings that used to end so disastrously at school, in convulsions or a deluge of tears. She saw that her dark eyes were dilated, that her whole face quivered from time to time, and that the violets she wore rose and fell with the beating of her heart. Once or twice she asked her, as in their school-days, “What ails thee?”
“Nothing,” replied the other as curtly as she used to reply at school.
“Don’t you see that there is nothing the matter with her?” questioned Andrea. “Indeed, she looks better than usual. Signora Lucia, you are another person to-night, you have a colour.”
“I wish it were so.”
“Are you courageous?”
“Why do you ask?”
“To know.”