'
Lucy shuddered and smiled.
'I'm glad she wasn't yours!'
'Why? The peasants would soon have made a saint of her, and invented a
legend to fit. The snakes, for them, would have been the instruments
of martyrdom--turned into a martyr's crown. Italy and Catholicism
absorb--assimilate--everything. "_Santa Medusa!_"--I assure you, she would
be quite in order.'
There was a pause. Then she heard him say under his breath--'Marvellous,
marvellous Italy!'
She started and gave a slight cry--unsteady, involuntary.
'But you don't love her!--you are ungrateful to her!'
He looked up surprised--then laughed--a frank, pugnacious laugh.
'There is Italy--and Italy.'
'There is only one Italy!--Aristodemo's Italy--the Italy the peasants work
in.'
She turned to him, breathing quicker, the colour returning to her pale
cheek.
'The Italy that has just sent seven thousand of her sons to butchery in a
wretched colony, because her hungry politicians must have glory and keep
themselves in office? You expect me to love that Italy?'
Within the kind new sweetness of his tone--a sweetness no man could use
more subtly--there had risen the fiery accustomed note. But so restrained,
so tempered to her weakness, her momentary dependence upon him!
'You might be generous to her--just, at least!--for the sake of the old.
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