"I am a romantic, it seems! But without murder I might hide among these mountains and live alone, and feed on grasses and wild birds! Why cannot man live alone? Why can't he burst the fetters which bind him to society and which strangle him? Zarathustra? Oh yes; but even he cried once. 'Oh! how alone I am! I have no longer anyone to share my laughter, no one to give me comfort----'" The ascent, slow and dangerous, continued for three hours. The sky had cleared, the wind blew, the schisty summits shone in the sunlight, profiled with silver on the infinite azure. Now the island displayed itself in all its cerulean vastness: clear mountains, grey villages, shining pools, here and there confounded with the vaporous line of the sea. Anania admired; he followed with interest the explanations of the guide, he looked through his field-glass. But his trouble never passed out of his thoughts; when he tried to enjoy the sweetness of the surrounding beauty, it clutched him with tiger paw more tightly to itself. Towards noon they reached the top of Bruncu Spina. Anania climbed on the heap of shining shale which marked the summit, and flung himself on the ground to escape the fury of the blasts which blew from all sides. The whole island was stretched out before him, with its blue mountains and its silver sea, glittering under the midday sun. Overhead the heaven was immense, infinite, void as human thought. The wind raged furiously in the great emptiness. Its assaults invested Anania in mad fury, in the violent anger of a formidable wild beast, which would permit the approach of no other being to the aereal cave where it was resolved to reign alone. The young man resisted. The guide crawled to his side and pointed out the principal towns, and villages and mountains. But the wind ravished his words, and cut short the respiration both of speaker and of hearer. "And that's Nuoro?" said Anania, pointing. "Yes. It is cut in two by the hill of St Onofrio." "I know. It's very clear." "If it wasn't for this devil of a wind," shouted the guide, "one could send a salute to Nuoro, it looks so close to-day." Anania remembered his promise to Margherita. "From the highest summit in Sardinia, I will send you a greeting. I will cry to the heavens your name and my love--as I should like to cry from the highest summit in all the world, for all mankind to wonder and to applaud." And it seemed to him that the wind was carrying away his heart, battering it against the granite colossi of the Gennargentu. On his return he expected to find his mother with the widow. Anxiously he crossed the deserted village and stopped before Aunt Grathia's low black door. The evening was falling sadly. Strong gusts blew down the steep, stony streets. The heaven was pale. It felt like autumn. Anania listened. Silence. Through the chink of the door, he saw the fire's red brightness. Silence. He went in, and saw only the old woman, who sat spinning, quiet as a spectre.