But the signora’s miserable eyes seemed far away, as if they were following that slowly moving train of cattle-cars packed with boyish faces. She fingered unseeingly the arm of Bianca’s dress with its cross of blood-red. At last, with a long sigh, she brought herself back to the present. Was I ready for an Italian lesson? We might as well lose no more time. She patted Bianca and pushed her gently away. “Run along and take off that terrible dress!” she said irritably. Bianca, with a little, discontented gesture and appreciative pat to the folds of her neat costume, left us alone. “She thinks of nothing but this war!” the signora exclaimed. “The girls are as bad as the men!”
“Is it not quite natural?”
We began on the verbs, but the signora’s mind, usually so vivacious, was not on the lesson. It was still with that slow troop-train on its way to the frontier.
“You are too tired,” I suggested.
“No, but I can’t stay in here—let us go into the city.”
Rome seemed curiously lifeless and dead after all the passionate movement of the past week. It was empty, too. All the troops that had filled the seething streets had departed overnight, and the turbulent citizens had vanished. The city, like the heart of Italy, was in suspense, waiting for the final word which meant war.
“You will not stay here much longer, I suppose?” the signora questioned.
“I suppose not.” Life seemed to have flowed out of this imperial Rome, with all its loveliness, in the wake of the troop-trains.
“If I could only go, too!... If we knew where he was to be!”
“You will know—and you will follow with Bianca.”