Why should he diminish his happiness by quarreling with her? He thought he could imitate Balli better by the sweet enjoyment of her love than by the renunciation which in a moment of madness he had contemplated only that morning. The only trace of his former irritation was a kind of excitement which gave an added animation to his words and to the atmosphere of the evening, which during the first part at least was wholly delightful. They decided to spend the first of the two hours they would have together in going for a walk outside the town, and the second in walking back again. It was he who suggested this plan, for he wanted to calm his nerves by walking at her side. It took them about an hour to reach the Arsenal, an hour of perfect happiness in the limpid evening air, just freshened by the first touch of early autumn.

She sat down on the low wall which ran along the road, while he remained standing and looking down at her. He saw her head stand out against the dark background, lit up on one side by a street lamp. He saw the Arsenal stretching along the shore, and the whole city, which at that hour seemed dead. “The city of labor!” he said, surprised at himself for having chosen that place in which to make love to her.

The sea had disappeared from view; it was shut out by the peninsula facing them. There were a few houses scattered over the shore like men on a chess-board, and farther off was a ship in process of construction. The city of labor seemed even bigger than it really was. Away to the left some distant lamps seemed to carry it still farther than its actual extent. Those lamps, he remembered, belonged to a great factory situated on the opposite bank of the valley of Muggia. Yes, work was going on there too; it was right that it should appear to the eye as a continuation of the city they were in.

She was looking too, and for a moment Emilio’s thoughts were far removed from thoughts of love. In the past he had indulged in socialistic ideas, of course without ever stirring a finger to realize them. How far away those ideas seemed from him now!

He was stricken with remorse for having betrayed his early ideals and aspirations; for the moment the whole of his present life seemed to him to be a kind of apostasy.

But these faint prickings of conscience soon vanished. She was asking him questions about certain objects, especially that great monster hanging in mid-air. And he explained to her the nature of a crane. When he had lived as a solitary student he had never succeeded in making his thoughts and words intelligible to those to whom he sought to address them, and he had vainly tried, several years ago, to come out of his lair and mix with the crowd. It was no use; he had been obliged to retire discomfited from the unequal contest. He had only seemed ridiculous. But how sweet he found it now to avoid all difficult words and ideas, and make himself understood. It was quite easy for him now to break up his thoughts into fragments while he talked, and release it from the difficult, prisoning word under which he had first conceived it; and how happy he was when he saw a ray of intelligence light up her blue eyes!

But the music of that night was not without its discords. Some days ago he had heard a story which moved him deeply. A German astronomer had been living for about ten years in his observatory on one of the highest peaks of the Alps, among the eternal snows. The nearest village was about three thousand feet lower down, and his food was brought up daily by a girl who, when he went there first, was twelve years old. In ten years of going up and down those three thousand feet daily the girl had grown into a strong and beautiful woman, and the astronomer made her his wife. The marriage had been celebrated in the village a short while before, and for their honeymoon the couple had gone up to their home together. He thought of this story while lying in Angiolina’s arms; that was how he would have liked to possess her: three thousand feet away from any living person. And so, granted that it were possible for him, as for the astronomer, to go on devoting his life forever to the same end, he would have been able to bind himself to her for good and all, without any reservation. “And you?” he asked impatiently, seeing that she had not understood why he had told this anecdote, “would you like to stay up there alone with me?”

She hesitated—she clearly hesitated.