MORIRE. MORITURUS. CAPITO? NON CAPIRE? Oh, CAPIRE
be blowed!"
There was a short pause. The language seems to have been understood
this time. For, amid a ripple of laughter, a rich Southern voice was
heard to say with a sigh of mock resignation:
"SIA FATTA LA VOLONTA DI DIO!"
Then silence. . . .
Denis turned. He walked up the steps as in a dream, neither slowly nor
fast. No one was ever more unhappy, though he scarcely felt as yet the
depths of his own humiliation. It was more like a stab--a numbing
assassin-like stab. He could hear the beatings of his heart.
He reached the upper level of the town, he knew not how.
All lay quiet as he found his way among the familiar buildings. It was
after midnight; most of the lamps had been extinguished. The streets
were deserted. He heard, in the distance, the song of a drunken
wayfarer reeling homewards from a tavern or from the Club.
In one of the little roadways that converge upon the market-place
something was astir. It was a dim phantom of willowy outline, swaying
capriciously to and fro, like a black feather tossed by the wind.
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