again and yet again," for only so, he feels, will words "cease to
be more than words." _His blood_, for instance--

". . . let those two words mean 'His blood';
And nothing more. Notice, I'll say them now:
'His blood.' . . ."

She answers with phrases, the things that madden him--she speaks of
"the deed," and at once he breaks out again. _The deed_, and _the
event_, and _their passion's fruit_--

". . . the devil take such cant!
Say, once and always, Luca was a wittol,
I am his cut-throat, you are . . ."

With extraordinary patience, though she there, wearily as it were,
interrupts him, Ottima again puts the question by, and offers him wine.
In doing this, she says something which sends a shiver down the reader's
back--

". . . Here's wine!
_I brought it when we left the house above,
And glasses too--wine of both sorts . . ._"

He takes no notice; he reiterates--

"But am I not his cut-throat? What are you?"

Still with that amazing, that almost beautiful, patience--the quality of
her defect of callousness--Ottima leaves this also without comment. She
gazes now from the closed window, sees a Capuchin monk go by, and makes
some trivial remarks on his immobility at church; then once more offers
Sebald the flask--the "black" (or, as we should say, the "red") wine.

Melodramatic and obvious in all he does and says, Sebald refuses the red
wine: "No, the white--the white!"--then drinks ironically to Ottima's
black eyes. He reminds her how he had sworn that the new year should
not rise on them "the ancient shameful way," nor does it.

"Do you remember last damned New Year's Day?"

* * * * *

The characters now are poised for us--in their national, as well as
their individual, traits. Ottima, an Italian, has the racial
matter-of-factness, callousness, and patience; Sebald, a German, the no
less characteristic sentimentality and emotionalism. Her attitude
remains unchanged until the critical moment; his shifts and sways with
every word and action. No sooner has he drunk the white wine than he can
brutally, for an instant, exult in the thought that Luca is not alive to
fondle Ottima before his face; but with her instant answer (rejoicing as
she does to retrieve the atmosphere which alone is native to her
sense)--

". . . Do you
Fondle me, the