She must go home. She must go to the island. She must go to Vere, to Gaspare, to Emile—to her life.
Her body and soul revolted from the thought, her outraged body and her outraged soul, which were just beginning to feel their courage, as flesh and nerves begin to feel pain after an operation when the effect of the anaesthetic gradually fades away.
She was walking up the hill and still crying.
She met a boy of the people, swarthy, with impudent black eyes, tangled hair, and a big, pouting mouth, above which a premature mustache showed like a smudge. He looked into her face and began to laugh. She saw his white teeth, and her tears rushed back to their sources. At once her eyes were dry. And, almost at once, she thought, her heart became hard as stone, and she felt self-control like iron within her.
That boy of the people should be the last human being to laugh at her.
She saw a tram stop. It went to the “Trattoria del Giardinetto.” She got in, and sat down next to two thin English ladies, who held guide-books in their hands, and whose pointed features looked piteously inquiring.
“Excuse me, but do you know this neighborhood?”
She was being addressed.
“Yes.”
“That is fortunate—we do not. Perhaps you will kindly tell us something about it. Is it far to Bagnoli?”