“Go home quickly now, Olive. There will be a storm. The poor mad people will howl to-night in the Manicomio. I hear them sometimes when I am lying awake. Good-night, my dear.”
“Good-night.”
CHAPTER XII
Olive was tired, and now that she was alone she knew that she was also a little afraid, so that she lingered on the way and went slowly up the stairs of the house in the Piazza Tolomei. Carmela answered her ring at the bell; her face was swollen and her eyes were red with crying, and the little lamp she carried shook in her hand.
“Oh, Olive,” she said, “Orazio says he will not marry her. He has heard such things about her from his friends, and even in the Café Greco.... It is a scandal.”
She put her lamp down on the floor, and took out her handkerchief to wipe away the tears that were running down her cheeks.
Olive came in and shut the door after her.
“Where is he?”