Actually only Ida followed it, because Nino saw nothing, heard nothing, his eyes fixed on his bride standing there, finally alone with him, all, all his. But what was this? Was she crying?

"My dad," said Ida, waving goodbye with her handkerchief. "There, do you see? He, too..."

"But not you, Ida... my Ida..." stammered Nino, almost sobbing, and trembling violently as he attempted to embrace her.

Ida pushed him away.

"No, leave me alone, please."

"I want to dry your tears."

"No, dear, thanks anyway. I'll dry them myself."

Nino stood there awkwardly, looking at her with a pitiful face and a half-open mouth. Ida finished drying her tears, and then:

"What's the matter with you?" she asked him. "You're trembling all over. My goodness, no, Nino, don't stand there in front of me like that! You'll make me laugh. And I warn you, once I start laughing, I won't be able to stop. Wait, I'll make you snap out of it."

She gently placed her hands on his temples and blew into his eyes. At the touch of those fingers and at the breath from those lips, he felt his legs doubling up beneath him. He was about to fall to his knees, but she held him up, bursting out in a guffaw:

"On the highway? Are you crazy? Come on, let's go! There, look, there's a little hill over there! We'll still be able see the carriages. Let's go look!"

And seizing his arm, she dragged him away impetuously.

From all the surrounding countryside, blanketed by sun-dried weeds and grasses scattered by time, there arose in the oppressive heat what seemed like an ancient, dense breath of wind that mingled with the warm, heavy fumes of the manure fermenting in small piles on the fallow fields. It also mingled with the sharp aromas of the tenacious wild mint and the sage. That dense breath of wind, those warm, heavy fumes, these sharp aromas, only he noticed them. As Ida ran behind the thick hedges of prickly pears and among the bristly yellowish tufts of burnt stubble, she heard instead how gaily the woodlarks screeched in the sun, and how in the stifling heat of the plains, and in the bewildering silence, the crowing of roosters resounded portentously from distant barnyards. Every now and then she felt the cool breath of air that arose from the nearby sea to stir the tired leaves of the almond trees, already sparse and yellowed, and the crowded, pointed, ashen ones of the olive.

They quickly reached the top of the hill, but he could barely stand, and almost fell apart, so exhausted was he from the run. He decided to sit down, and, tugging at her waist, tried to make her sit down too, right there beside him. But Ida warded him off with:

"Let me look around first."

She was beginning to feel restless inside, but didn't want to show it. Irritated by certain obstinant and quite curious overtures he made to her, she could not, she would not, keep still. She wanted to keep on running, farther and farther away. She wanted to shake him, distract him, and distract herself as well, so long as the day lasted.

There, beyond the hill, lay an immense plain, a sea of stubble, in which one could discern, here and there, the meandering black traces of burn-beating and, here and there, too, a few clumps of caper or licorice plants that broke the bristling yellow expanse. Way, way down there, almost at the opposite shore of that vast yellow sea, one could spot the roofs of a small village nestled among tall, black poplars.

So then, Ida suggested to her husband that they go as far as there, way down to that village. How long would it take them? An hour, not much more. It was barely five o'clock. Back in the villa, the servants still had to clear things away. The two would be back before evening.

Nino attempted to oppose her suggestion, but she pulled him up by his hands and brought him to his feet, and then she was gone, running down the short slope of that little hill and making her way through the sea of stubble, as agile and swift as a fawn. Unable to keep up with her, he grew redder by the minute and appeared dazed. He perspired, panted as he ran, and called out to her to give him her hand:

"At least your hand! At least your hand!" he went on shouting.

All of a sudden she stopped, letting out a scream. A flock of cawing ravens had swarmed up before her.