One evening a little girl with thick hair falling in a red plait over thin shoulders, with a green hat and a short green dress, which left half-bare her meagre legs and big feet cased in yellow shoes, reminded her of a water bird. Then suddenly, under those trees blackened and burnt up by the heat of a thousand burning breaths, she thought of her great river, of the poplars rising at this hour like candles lighted by the moon, of the white line of the river-banks cleaving the immense circle of the plain; and she marvelled that she no longer felt the nostalgia which she had known of old. Antonio proposed to sit down at the café, but Regina preferred moving round with the crowd, going as far as Via Volturno, where the voices of the melon-sellers crossed, followed, answered each other jealously, like the crowing of cocks. "_Favorischino, Signori! Favorischino!_" On the black, damp tables, cut melons showed rosy in the trembling lamp-light, and diffused a fresh and agreeable odour like great red flowers. Children, workmen, a pair of students, a woman or two, bent over the pink flesh of the juicy slices. "_Favorischino, Signori!_ Behold what beauties! Real blood! Will you buy one, lady?" There was a stall at the corner of the street against the wall, and the vendor looked condescendingly at the people clustered round his banks of melons; but if any one noticed his money-box, he turned anxiously and put on an air of preternatural solemnity. "Do you intend to buy, madam?" And from an ambulant gramaphone, whose red trumpet rose in the shadow like a coral cup, issued a strange, hoarse music, a metallic and rapid laughter, now near, now far, which streamed forth from an unknown and alarming profundity, expressing a false joy, a cry of misery, grief, derision, of wickedness and roguery, of pity and sadness--a voice at once mocking and imploring, empty and portentous, unconscious, and supremely melancholy. To Regina it seemed the voice of the surrounding crowd. Yes! the voice of the pale young daughter of joy, with the auburn hair under the great black hat, seated alone and thoughtful before one of the tables at the Morteo; the voice of the child like the water bird of the famished singer, of the rough melon-seller, of the bright-eyed old man in the pink shirt, of the gentleman with the thick lips and brutal looks, of the melancholy fat man, of the lady in the red dress lifted to show a trim ankle, of the wet-nurse with the Jewish profile, of the yellow infant which she held in her arms, of the little woman in black with floating veil who ran after the tram, of the pair of lovers leaning romantically against the garden gate.