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.
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