He opened his eyes and spat on the ground. At the moment he had a genuine scorn of Giovanna, and yet, at the very same time, tender, distant memories surged up in his breast. He remembered a kiss he had once given her as she lay asleep, and how she had opened her eyes with a startled look, exclaiming: "Oh, I thought it was some one else!" Well, what manner of foolishness was this for him to be thinking of now? He was a simpleton, neither more nor less than a simpleton! Moreover, how could he know, supposing for a moment that he were to go, whether Giovanna would receive him or drive him away? The man's mind was neither trained nor developed, yet, at that moment, he was reasoning as a much more complex nature might have done. He hoped that she would not receive him; he knew that for himself there was nothing for it but to go on living and suffering; yet he felt that, should he go to her and be repulsed, at least a ray of light would penetrate the cold, dreary void that encircled him. But he wanted her, he longed for her still. From the day he had lost her his whole being had suffered like a crushed and twisted limb that still goes on living. Yet, mingled with this sense of longing there was a spiritual breath as well, the instinct of the immortal soul which never wholly dies out, even in the most degraded. He dreamed of Giovanna an honest woman, lost forever in this world, but restored to him in eternity. Now, if she were to betray her second husband, even for the sake of her first, she would not--could not--be an honest woman! So thought Costantino, and yet---- It was, perhaps, ten o'clock, and he had been lying for half an hour or more on the stone bench, when a mournful strain broke in upon the stillness. It was the blind man, singing and accompanying himself upon his rude instrument. His voice, clear enough, but sad and monotonous, vibrated through the night air with a sobbing suggestion of homesickness that was hardly human, as though it were the wail of a lost soul, recalling the few hours of happiness spent upon earth. The music seemed to be a cry for light, happiness, the joy of living, all those things whose existence the blind youth half understood, but could never hope to realise--which the dead have lost, and can never hope to repossess. Costantino shivered and got up; the voice and the accompaniment began to die away, growing gradually fainter and fainter, and ceasing at last altogether. He felt a great wave of agony and tenderness surge up in his breast. In the darkness, the silence, the unutterable loneliness that surrounded him, he, too, felt an overmastering longing, like the blind man's, for light; an agonising homesickness, like the dead recalling their brief experience of life. He turned and began to walk in the direction of the village.