Gian-Luca listened with a little smile, while she told of these simple things. Of the faith that believed in that Footprint in stone, of the priest who ate oranges grown in her garden, of the tinkling sheep bells across the Campagna, of the mule who stole grapes and whose name was Umberto. And while she talked thus, she seemed very childish, and made Gian-Luca, nearly three years her junior, feel terribly cynical and old. But when he looked at her he felt very young, for her face was the face of a mother of men.
“I would like to know Aunt Ottavia,” he told her, “for I want you and me to be friends.”
She smiled. “I will give you her name and address.”
He wrote it down in his notebook. “My grandmother will be glad to know her, too,” he went on; “I will surely see that they meet, and then I can take you out sometimes—we might go into the country when we get our day off—I will try to arrange that we get it together.”
She said: “I should like to go into the country, I should like to see fields and trees.”
“I hope you will like to see them with me,” he smiled.
She answered: “Yes, I shall like that, too.”
He glanced at his watch. “We must go,” he said reluctantly; “tomorrow we will come here again. It is good in our life to get plenty of air—and you are so new to our life.” She appeared to consider this for a moment, looking thoughtfully into his face; then she nodded, as though what she saw there reassured her. “That is as you will, signore.”
II
Gian-Luca’s courtship of Maddalena was tranquil and quite without pain, for this was not loving as he had loved the Padrona, but a gentle, kindly and grateful emotion, soothing rather than stimulating—for the rest, it was being loved. He made the acquaintance of Aunt Ottavia whose house was in Coldbath Square, and she in her turn went to call on Teresa, and was properly impressed by the salumeria, and properly respectful to its mistress. Teresa invited Maddalena to tea, and inspected her not unkindly. Old Compton Street getting wind of the event, in came Rosa, Nerone and Rocca. Presently Mario came in as well; and Maddalena, who was not yet affianced, blushed and smiled shyly beneath all those eyes, and prayed that the Virgin would tell her what to say, so that she might make a good impression.
Then Gian-Luca went to see Millo in his office and asked for an extra day’s leave; he also asked that a girl in the still-room should be granted a holiday as well.
Millo smiled faintly: “What is this, Gian-Luca? And who is this girl from the still-room?”
“Maddalena Trevi,” Gian-Luca told him; “I wish to make her my wife.”
“I see. And so you are going to get married?”
“If she will have me, signore.”
Millo looked into Gian-Luca’s face and noted the lines round his eyes—other things, too, he noted in that face.
“It is time you got married,” he told him with decision; “and I hope it may mean that you are going to settle down.”
“What else can it mean, signore?” said Gian-Luca.
III
Gian-Luca took Maddalena to Hadley Woods—they are very lovely in June. Fabio had made up a luncheon basket, and as Gian-Luca carried it he smiled, remembering a day at Kew Gardens. Maddalena had dressed herself all in white, something had made her discard black that morning. She walked by Gian-Luca, very stately and tall, a true daughter of Rome the eternally fruitful—even so had her young virgins walked by their lovers for more than two thousand years.
They sat down together under the beech trees, and he lifted her hand and kissed it. “Your hand is full of happiness,” he said, “will it spare a little for me?”
“Whatever it holds is yours,” she told him, “all that it holds, I give.”
“And yet I have not been a good man,” he said slowly, “not as you understand goodness.”
“I do not know what you have been,” she answered; “I only know what you are.”
“And that is enough for you, Maddalena?”
She smiled: “It is more than enough.”
Then he said: “I have no name to offer my wife, I was born in what men call sin.”
“If you are the fruit of sin,” she said softly, “how great must be God’s forgiveness.”
“Will you marry a man without a name?” he persisted.
She said: “I will marry you. No name in the world has ever sounded so sweet to me as your name—Gian-Luca.” Then he took her in his arms and kissed her on the mouth—but gently, for she did not stir his passion. And she kissed him back with slow, lingering kisses, as though she were groping for the soul of this man, with her tender, virginal lips. Presently she pressed his head down on her bosom and rocked him with her arms about his shoulders.
“You who have suffered so much,” she whispered; “you who have suffered so much—”
“No one has ever loved me before,” he told her; and there was joy in his voice. “I am glad that no one has loved me before—that you should be the first, Maddalena.”
“Yes,” she answered, “for that is surely as it should be.” And now she was stroking his hair. “Because of that, beloved, the others do not count: I have washed them away with my love.”
He said: “Why are you so good to me, my woman?”
And at that she laughed to herself. “If I told you, how could you understand—you who are so much a man?” They got up and wandered together through the woods, arm-in-arm like the other lovers; and Maddalena welcomed their presence—for although he was wishing that the woods might be empty, she saw those lovers through the eyes of her love, and beheld much glory about them.
Presently he said: “These wide, green glades—they always make me feel strange; they make
