She was afraid
that he would be damned for his blasphemies; and as to this her fear was
mortal fear. It was horrible, too, that she was humpbacked and a dwarf.
Not until the train drew away from the station did we lose the clamour.
No one had tried to silence the man or to soothe the woman's horror. But
has any one who saw it forgotten her face? To me for the rest of the day
it was a sensible rather than a merely mental image. Constantly a red
blur rose before my eyes for a background, and against it appeared the
dwarf's head, lifted with sobs, under the provincial black lace veil. And
at night what emphasis it gained on the boundaries of sleep! Close to my
hotel there was a roofless theatre crammed with people, where they were
giving Offenbach. The operas of Offenbach still exist in Italy, and the
little town was placarded with announcements of _La Bella Elena_. The
peculiar vulgar rhythm of the music jigged audibly through half the hot
night, and the clapping of the town's-folk filled all its pauses. But
the persistent noise did but accompany, for me, the persistent vision of
those three figures at the Via Reggio station in the profound sunshine of
the day.
POCKET VOCABULARIES
A serviceable substitute for style in literature has been found in such a
collection of language ready for use as may be likened to a portable
vocabulary.
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