“Have you known Tor di Rocca long? He was here last winter. He has a villa somewhere outside Rome. I think it belonged to his mother. She was an Orsini.”
“You are not going to fight him?”
Outside, in the ilex wood, birds were calling to one another. The sun gilded the green of the gnarled old trees; it had rained in the night, and the garden was sweet with the scent of moist earth. The young man sighed. He had meant to take his “little brother” into the Campagna this April day to see the spring pageant of the skies, to hear the singing of larks high up at heaven’s gate, the tinkling of sheep bells, the gurgling of water springs half hidden in the green lush grass that grows in the shadow of the ruined Claudian aqueducts.
“Camille, answer me.”
He got up and went back to his easel. “You must run away now,” he said. “I can’t work this morning. I think I shall go to Naples for a few days, but I will let you know when I return. We must get on with the ‘Rosamund.’”
She went obediently to put on her hat, but the face she saw reflected in the little hanging mirror was pale and troubled. He came with her to the door, and when she gave him her hand he bent to kiss it. Her eyes filled again with tears. He will be killed, she thought, and for me.
“Don’t fight! For my sake, don’t. I shall begin to think that I am a creature of ill-omen. They say some women are like that; they have the mal occhio; they give sorrow—”
“That is absurd,” he said roughly, and then, in a changed voice, “Good-bye, child.”