"Hush! keep quiet!" she said in a low voice, "she's coming! she's coming! She's here. I've told her. Hush! She's desperately frightened. Don't be cruel to her, son!" She went out again, leaving the door open. The wind seized it, pushing it to and fro as if romping with it. Anania waited; pale, unable to think. Each time the door opened the sun and the wind rushed into the kitchen, illuminating, shaking everything in it. Then the door closed and everything became as before. For several minutes Anania unconsciously followed the play of the sun and the wind: then he became irritated, and stepped over to slam the door; his countenance dark with nervousness and anger. Thus he appeared at the moment when the unhappy mother reached the threshold,--trembling, timid, ragged as a beggar. He looked at her; she looked at him; fear and diffidence in the eyes of each. Neither thought of extending a hand nor of uttering a greeting. A whole world of suffering and of sin lay between them and divided them inexorably. Anania held the door open, leaning against it; the wind and the sun flooded his figure. His eyes followed the miserable Olì as Aunt Grathia pushed her towards the hearth. Yes, it was she; the pale emaciated apparition half seen at the black window of the Cantoniera; in her grey visage the great light eyes, wan with fear and weakness, seemed the eyes of a sick and homeless cat. When she was seated, the widow fancied it a happy thought to leave her two guests alone. She went out, but Anania followed her angrily. "Where are you going?" he cried, "come back, or I'll go away myself." Olì heard the threat, for when Anania and the widow returned to the kitchen, she was standing by the door and weeping, as if about herself to slink away. Blind with grief and shame, the young man threw himself towards her, seized her arm, pushed her against the wall, then shut and locked the door. "No!" he cried, while the woman crouched on the ground, curling herself up like a hedgehog, and weeping convulsively: "you shan't go away any more. You are not to stir another step without my consent. You are to stay here. Cry as much as you like, but from this you shan't move. Your gay doings are all over." Olì wept louder, shaken by spasms of trembling. Through her sobs sounded frantic derision of her son's last words. He felt it, and remorse for his brutality increased his fury. Her tears irritated instead of moving him. All the instincts of primitive man, jealous, ferocious, barbarous, vibrated in his quivering nerves. He knew it, but was unable to control himself.