Bianca Maria came into this harmonious atmosphere, that gently satisfied this strong man's eyes and heart. Antonio Amati did not try to see her oftener, nor to know and speak to her; it was enough to see her in the early morning, behind her balcony windows, look down vaguely into the dull, damp court, then disappear as slowly as she came—a quiet, solitary figure, not sorrowful, but not smiling. Between one patient going and another coming, Dr. Amati got up from his desk, and went as far as the balcony; in one or other of these little walks, that seemed to serve him as a pause, a rest, a distraction between one bit of work finished and another begun, he caught sight of Bianca Maria's pale, thoughtful face; and for two years that satisfied him. It is true that sometimes in these two years he had met her on the stairs, or in the Rossi Palace dark entrance, with her father or Margherita; he took off his hat, and she acknowledged his bow unsmilingly. She, too, knew him well, seeing him every day; but she looked him in the face frankly, with none of that extreme reserve, half smile, half sham indifference, or any of the little coquetries of commonplace girls. Frankly and innocently she looked at him a minute, returned his bow, and then her proud, gentle eyes took their vague thoughtful expression again.
They did not make daily appointments to see each other—he was too serious, too engrossed in duty to do so, and she was a simple creature, living too solitary an inward life to think of it—only they saw each other every day, and got accustomed to it.
'But perhaps she is to be a nun,' the door-keeper repeated sometimes. She had got over her illness, and employed herself over other people's ailments, moral and physical.
But the doctor walked on without replying, thinking of the sad chorus of lamentations that went on around him, from rich and poor, for real, present, imminent sorrows, almost hopeless to cure, but worthy of his courage and talent to attempt. Still, in that damp, south-east wind this autumn morning, whilst bad coughs, heart complaints, fevers came by turns dolefully in his list of cases, this sickly atmosphere of bad weather in Naples making them worse, he had, as usual, filled up his leisure by going to the balcony; and not seeing Bianca Maria, he felt annoyance of a latent, indefinite kind, which every new country or suburban patient made him forget; but it came back when the patient left. The forenoon passed in the gloom of the great writing-table, covered with maroon; of these colourless, anxious faces held up to him; these weak, complaining voices; lean breasts, or flabby with unhealthy fat, that were bared for him to find traces of consumption or atrophy, with wheezing, funereal coughs. Never had he felt the disagreeables of his profession so much as that day. Bianca Maria did not appear.
'She is ill,' he thought momentarily. Having thought of this, he felt as sure as if someone had told him or if he had seen her ill himself. She was sick. He at once thought of helping her, with that instinct to save life all great doctors have. He thought it over a minute; but his mind came back to the realities of life at once. It was folly to be taken up about a person he did not know, and who probably did not care to have him. If they needed his skill, they would have called him. For all that, he was sure Bianca Maria was ill.
But another patient came into the room. There were two, rather—a youth and a girl of the lower class. He recognised the girl at once from her hollow, worn face and sad, black-encircled eyes, the lock of untidy hair. He had cured her of typhoid at San Raffaele hospital, when the epidemic was raging in Naples.
'Is it you, Carmela?'
'Good-day to you, sir,' said the girl, rushing forward to kiss the doctor's hand, which he quickly drew back.
'Are you ill?' he asked.