The younger girl met her cousin at the door; Maria had fainted, and la zia was hysterical; as to Orazio, he was sitting on the sofa crying, with his mean, mouse-coloured head buried in the cushions.
“I looked out of your bedroom window as I could not get into her room,” whispered Carmela. “Oh, Olive, what shall we do?”
“I am going to take down a sheet as they will not let us bring her in. You can come with me, and we will stay beside her and say prayers.”
“Yes, yes. Oh, Olive, that is a good idea.”
The two came out into the street together and spread the white linen covering carefully over the stark body before they knelt, one on each side. Of the thousands who had filled the Piazzale at sunset hundreds came now to see them mourning the broken thing that lay between. Olive was aware of many faces, of the murmuring of a great crowd, and shame was added to the horror that held her fast. She folded her hands and tried to keep her eyes fixed upon them. Then she began to pray aloud.
“Pater noster, qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum—”
The clear voice was tremulous at first, but it gathered strength as it went on, and Carmela said the words too. The men in the crowd uncovered, and the women crossed themselves.
Rain was falling now, slowly at first and in heavy drops that splashed upon the stones, and there was a threatening sound—a rumbling of thunder—away in the south.
Olive knew no more prayers in Latin, but her cousin began the Miserere.
“Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam, et secundum multitudinem miserationum tuarum, dele iniquitatem meam.”