Bianca that night was roused from the deadness of sleep by unaccustomed signs of life in her bedfellow, Camilla, who, she realized with horror, was struggling in the effort to keep her sobbing inside and unheard.
“What is it? Oh, what is the matter?” she asked, feeling in the dark for her sister’s shoulder.
“Non mi seccare!” Camilla answered, with a furious dash of her heel. “Bother me not!” but without concealment after that she relieved her need to weep.
Giulio at Vicchio, far among the hills! Giulio thinking of her, while from the high loggia he looked Florenceward. Giulio sending his wishes as he gazed at Venus—stella confidente!—brightening in the fading sunset!
The pain of absence, of this black and total silence, was such that on the fourth day, after reading over all his letters, she broke the rule and stole out to go for just a minute to his street and satisfy her yearning to see the windows of his vacant room.
She did not go far, for on the way she saw him, or—for a moment she thought herself the victim, possibly, of an hallucination. It was his exact image, anyhow. He walked along lightly, his straw hat far back on his head, his pretty nose and white teeth to the wind, talking with a boy of his own age and type. He was laughing, as he drew something on the air with his half-burned cigarette; she caught the glint in the sunshine of the signet-ring on his little finger. She turned and ran.
That day she asked Bianca whether she would help her, and then she told her everything.
At evening—Antenore was kept late at the station on certain nights of the week—they slipped out together while Aunt Battistina’s back was turned, and hurrying like guilty creatures went to the Cornelio gardens.
Almost invariably, when Camilla had asked how he had spent the evening, Giulio had said, “At Cornelio’s, with my father.”
They posted themselves in an unlighted doorway whence they could watch the entrance of the fashionable open-air café. Over the laurel wall inside the iron railing floated golden haze. Between pieces of band-music were intervals of clattering china and voices. Figures passed in and out.