s content. Somewhere even she
was vastly proud of the dark veiled eternal loneliness she felt,
under his shadow.

And so it had to be. She shuddered when she touched him, because he
was so beautiful, and she was so submitted. She quivered when he
moved as if she were his shadow. Yet her mind remained distantly
clear. She would criticize him, find fault with him, the things he
did. But _ultimately_ she could find no fault with him. She had lost
the power. She didn't care. She had lost the power to care about his
faults. Strange, sweet, poisonous indifference! She was drugged. And
she knew it. Would she ever wake out of her dark, warm coma? She
shuddered, and hoped not. Mrs. Tuke would say atavism. Atavism! The
word recurred curiously.

But under all her questionings she felt well; a nonchalance deep as
sleep, a passivity and indifference so dark and sweet she felt it
must be evil. Evil! She was evil. And yet she had no power to be
otherwise. They were legally married. And she was glad. She was
relieved by knowing she could not escape. She was Mrs. Marasca. What
was the good of trying to be Miss Houghton any longer? Marasca, the
bitter cherry. Some dark poison fruit she had eaten. How glad she
was she had eaten it! How beautiful he was! And no one saw it but
herself. For her it was so potent it made her tremble when she
noticed him. His beauty, his dark shadow. Ciccio really was much
handsomer since his marriage. He seemed to emerge. Before, he had
seemed to make himself invisible in the streets, in England,
altogether. But now something unfolded in him, he was a potent,
glamorous presence, people turned to watch him. There was a certain
dark, leopard-like pride in the air about him, something that the
English people watched.

He wanted to go to Italy. And now it was _his_ will which counted.
Alvina, as his wife, must submit. He took her to London the day
after the marriage. He wanted to get away to Italy. He did not like
being in England, a foreigner, amid the beginnings of the spy craze.

In London they stayed at his cousin's house. His cousin kept a
restaurant in Battersea, and was a flourishing London Italian, a
real London product with all the good English virtues of cleanliness
and honesty added to an Italian shrewdness. His name was Giuseppe
Califano, and he was pale, and he had four children of whom he was
very proud. He received Alvina with an affable respect, as if she
were an asset in the family, but as i