But with the sharp eyes of an observing man, who finds out the truth from the slightest symptoms, he saw the girl was walking undecidedly; her face, as she looked up to bow, was intensely pale, so that again his medical instinct was to help her. He was just going to speak, to ask her brusquely where the pain was, but her proud, gentle eyes were cast down again absent-mindedly; her mouth had that severe silent look that imposes silence on others. She disappeared without his saying anything. Dr. Amati shrugged his shoulders as he got into the carriage, and buried himself in a medical journal, as he did every day, to fill up even the short drive usefully. The carriage rolled along silently over the thin layer of mud; the damp obscured the windows, and the doctor felt the scirocco in himself and in the air. Even the hospital could not soothe the doctor's discomfort, though to take his thoughts off it he went deeper into practical medical work and scientific explanations to the pupils than usual. He went backwards and forwards from one bed to another, followed by a crowd of youths, taller than any of them, with an obstinate man's short forehead, marked by two perpendicular lines, from a constant frown, showing a strong will and absorption in his work; his thick brush of black hair was roughly set on his forehead, with some white tufts showing already. So great was his activity of thought, words, and action, one expected to see the smoke of a volcano coming out. His orders to the assistants and his class, even to the nuns, were given harshly; they all obeyed quickly and silently, feeling respect for the iron will, in spite of his rough commands, mingled with admiration for the man who was looked on as a saviour. Even the room he had charge of looked more melancholy and wretched that day than ever; the dulness of the air saddened the invalids, the heavy, evil-smelling damp made them feel their pains more. A whispered lament, like a long, laboured breath, was heard from one end of the room to the other, and the sick folks' pale faces got yellow in that ghastly light; their emaciated hands on the coverlets looked like wax.
In spite of trying to stun himself with work and words, Dr. Amati felt the disagreeables of his profession more than ever. Through that long, narrow room, full of beds in a row, and yellow, suffering faces, and the constant smell of phenic acid; through the scirocco mist and damp, that made even the nuns' pink cheeks bloodless-looking, he had a dream, a passing vision of a sunny, green, warm, clear, sweet-smelling country place, and his heart ached for this idyll, come and gone in a moment.
'Good-bye, gentlemen,' Amati said brusquely to the students, dismissing them.
They knew that when he so greeted them he wished to be left alone; they knew, they understood, the Professor was in a bad humour; they let him go. One of the ambulance men brought him two or three letters that came while he was going his rounds; they were summonses, urgent letters from sick people longing for him, from a father who had lost his head over a son's illness, from despairing women. He shook his head as he read them, as if he had lost confidence—as if all humanity sorrowing discouraged him. He went—yes, he went; but he felt very tired, which must have come from his mind, for he had worked much less than usual. He was going along absent-mindedly, when a shadow rose before him on the hospital stairs. It was a poor woman, of no particular age, with sparse grayish hair, black teeth, prominent cheek-bones, her clothes torn and dirty, whilst the slumbering babe she carried was clean, though meanly clad.
'Sir—please, sir!' she called out in a crying voice, seeing the doctor was going on without troubling himself about her.
'What do you want? Who are you?' the doctor asked roughly, without looking at her.
'I am Annarella, Carmela's sister—you saved her life,' said Gaetano the glove-cutter's wretched wife.
'Your sister in the morning, and now you!' the doctor impatiently exclaimed.
'Not for me, sir—not for me,' the gambler's wife said in a low tone. 'I can die. I don't signify. I do so little in the world I can't even find bread for my children.'
'Get out of the way—get out of the way.'