Now suppose that someone whose little machine has broken down starts looking at you as I did, but in earnest, not as a joke, and without your expecting it, stirs up from the bottom of your conscience all those dregs that have settled within you, and then you tell me whether you, too, wouldn't become frightened!"

So saying, Carlo Traldi made haste to get away. He turned back and added:

"And do you know what poor Daddi would mutter under his breath when he stared into your eyes? Go ahead, all of you, tell him what he muttered! I've got to run."

"What an abyss... What an abyss..."

"Like that?"

"Yes... 'What an abyss... What an abyss...'"

After Traldi had gone, the group broke up and Nicolino Respi was left feeling disconcerted, in the company of only two friends who continued talking for quite a while about the misfortune that had befallen poor Daddi.

About two months before, Respi had gone to visit Daddi at his villa near Perugia, and had found him as calm and serene as ever. He was there with his wife and a friend of hers, Gabriella Vanzi, an old school chum recently married to a naval officer who at that time was away on a cruise. Respi had spent three days at the villa and, no, not even once during those three days had Romeo Daddi looked at him in the manner described by Traldi.

But if he would have looked at him...

Nicolino Respi was overtaken by a feeling of confusion akin to dizziness, and so, for support, smiling though quite pale, he placed his arm under that of one of those two friends, making it seem like a simple gesture of friendship.

What had happened? What were they saying? Torture? What sort of torture? Oh, the sort Daddi had subjected his wife to...

"Afterwards, huh?" he blurted out.

And those two friends turned around to look at him.

"Oh... no, what I meant was... afterwards, when his... his little machine broke down."

"I should say so! Certainly not before!"

"My God, they were a paragon of conjugal harmony, of domestic tranquility. Certainly something must have happened to him while they were on vacation."

"Why, yes! At least some suspicion must have been aroused in him."

"Let's not speak nonsense! Concerning his wife?" burst out Nicolino Respi. "That, if anything, might have been the result, not the cause of his madness! Only a madman..."

"Right you are! Right you are!" shouted his friends. "A wife like Donna Bicetta!"

"Above suspicion! But, on the other hand..."

Nicolino Respi could no longer bear listening to those two. He was suffocating. He needed air. He needed to walk about in the open air, alone. He made some excuse and went away.

A torturesome doubt had insinuated itself into his mind, throwing it into confusion.

No one could know better than he that Donna Bicetta was above suspicion. For more than a year he had been declaring his love to her, besieging her with his courtship, without ever once obtaining anything more from her than a very sweet and compassionate smile for all his wasted efforts. With the serenity that comes from the staunchest feeling of self-assurance, without either taking offense at his impertinent overtures, or rebelling against them, she had made him understand that any insistence on his part would be useless, since she was just as much in love as he was, perhaps more so, but with her husband. If he really loved her, things being as they were, he had to understand that she could in no way violate her love for her husband. If he didn't understand that, then that in itself was a sign that he really didn't love her. And so?

Sometimes, in certain solitary beaches, the seawater is so limpid, so clear, and so transparent that, no matter how strong the desire is to immerse oneself in it, to enjoy its delightfully refreshing coolness, one feels an almost sacred restraint that inhibits one from disturbing it.

Nicolino Respi had always experienced this impression of limpidity and this feeling of restraint when approaching the soul of Donna Bicetta Daddi. This woman loved life with such a tranquil, attentive, and sweet love! Only in those three days spent in her villa near Perugia, having been overcome by a most passionate desire, had he violated that restraint and disturbed that limpidity, and he had been sternly rejected.

Now his agonizing doubt was that perhaps the anxiety he had caused her in those three days had not been lulled after his departure. Perhaps it had grown so great that her husband had become aware of it. One thing was certain: upon his arrival at the villa, Romeo Daddi had been calm and, within a few days of his departure, had gone mad.

"Let's not speak nonsense! Concerning his wife?" burst out Nicolino Respi. "That, if anything, might have been the result, not the cause of his madness! Only a madman..."

"Right you are! Right you are!" shouted his friends. "A wife like Donna Bicetta!"

"Above suspicion! But, on the other hand..."

Nicolino Respi could no longer bear listening to those two. He was suffocating. He needed air. He needed to walk about in the open air, alone.