taken his uncle's garden, had inherited his uncle's little house, and he
lived quite alone.
He was rich, Maria said, shouting in her strident voice. He at once
disclaimed it, peasant-wise. But before the signori he was glad also to
appear rich. He was mean, that was more, Maria cried, half-teasing, half
getting at him.
He attended to his garden, grew vegetables all the year round, lived in
his little house, and in spring made good money as a vine-grafter: he
was an expert vine-grafter.
After the boys had gone to bed he sat and talked to me. He was curiously
attractive and curiously beautiful, but somehow like stone in his clear
colouring and his clear-cut face. His temples, with the black hair, were
distinct and fine as a work of art.
But always his eyes had this strange, half-diabolic, half-tortured pale
gleam, like a goat's, and his mouth was shut almost uglily, his cheeks
stern. His moustache was brown, his teeth strong and spaced. The women
said it was a pity his moustache was brown.
'_Peccato!--sa, per bellezza, i baffi neri--ah-h!_'
Then a long-drawn exclamation of voluptuous appreciation.
'You live quite alone?' I said to him.
He did. And even when he had been ill he was alone. He had been ill two
years before. His cheeks seemed to harden like marble and to become pale
at the thought. He was afraid, like marble with fear.
'But why,' I said, 'why do you live alone? You are sad--_è triste_.'
He looked at me with his queer, pale eyes. I felt a great static misery
in him, something very strange.
'_Triste!_' he repeated, stiffening up, hostile. I could not understand.
'_Vuol' dire che hai l'aria dolorosa_,' cried Maria, like a chorus
interpreting. And there was always a sort of loud ring of challenge
somewhere in her voice.
'Sad,' I said in English.
'Sad I' he repeated, also in English. And he did not smile or change,
only his face seemed to become more stone-like. And he only looked at
me, into my eyes, with the long, pale, steady, inscrutable look of a
goat, I can only repeat, something stone-like.
'Why,' I said, 'don't you marry? Man doesn't live alone.'
'I don't marry,' he said to me, in his emphatic, deliberate, cold
fashion, 'because I've seen too much. _Ho visto troppo._'
'I don't understand,' I said.
Yet I could feel that Paolo, sitting silent, like a monolith also, in
the chimney opening, he understood: Maria also understood.
Il Duro looked again steadily into my eyes.
'_Ho visto troppo_,' he repeated, and the words seemed engraved on
stone. 'I've seen too much.'
'But you can marry,' I said, 'however much you have seen, if you have
seen all the world.'
He watched me steadily, like a strange creature looking at me.
'What woman?' he said to me.
'You can find a woman--there are plenty of women,' I said.
'Not for me,' he said. 'I have known too many. I've known too much, I
can marry nobody.'
'Do you dislike women?' I said.
'No--quite otherwise. I don't think ill of them.'
'Then why can't you marry? Why must you live alone?'
'Why live with a woman?' he said to me, and he looked mockingly. 'Which
woman is it to be?'
'You can find her,' I said. 'There are many women.'
Again he shook his head in the stony, final fashion.
'Not for me. I have known too much.'
'But does that prevent you from marrying?'
He looked at me steadily, finally. And I could see it was impossible for
us to understand each other, or for me to understand him. I could not
understand the strange white gleam of his eyes, where it came from.
Also I knew he liked me very much, almost loved me, which again was
strange and puzzling. It was as if he were a fairy, a faun, and had no
soul. But he gave me a feeling of vivid sadness, a sadness that gleamed
like phosphorescence. He himself was not sad. There was a completeness
about him, about the pallid otherworld he inhabited, which excluded
sadness. It was too complete, too final, too defined. There was no
yearning, no vague merging off into mistiness.... He was clear and fine
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