"No; I should still hear the river running."
Don Silverio looked at him. He saw by the set, sleepless, reckless look on his face that the young man was in no mood to be reached by any argument, or to be susceptible to either rebuke or consolation. The time might come when he would be so; but that time was far off he feared. The evenness, the simplicity, the loneliness of Adone's existence, made it open to impressions, and absorbed by them, as busy and changeful lives never are; it was like the heather plants around them, it would not bear transplanting; its birthplace would be its tomb.
"Let us go back to your mother," he said. "Why should you shun her? What you feel she feels also. Why leave her alone?"
"I will go home," said Adone.
"Yes, come home. You must see that there is nothing to be done or to be learned as yet. When they know anything fresh at San Beda they will let me know. The Prior is a man of good faith."
Adone turned on him almost savagely; his eyes were full of sullen anger.
"And I am to bear my days like this? Knowing nothing, hearing nothing, doing nothing to protect the water that is as dear to me as a brother, and the land which is my own? What will the land be without the river? You forget, sir, you forget!"
"No, I do not forget," said Don Silverio without offence. "But I ask you to hear reason. What can you possibly do? Think you no man has been wronged before you? Think you that you alone here will suffer? The village will be ruined. Do you feel for yourself alone?"
Adone seemed scarcely to hear. He was like a man in a fever who sees one set of images and cannot see anything else.
"Sir," he said suddenly, "why will you not go to Rome?"