peasant women, the black
hats of the men, the heaps of goods, the squealing pigs, the pale
lovely cattle, the many tethered asses--and she wondered if she
would die before she became one with it altogether. It was
impossible for her to become one with it altogether. Ciccio would
have to take her to England again, or to America. He was always
hinting at America.

But then, Italy might enter the war. Even here it was the great
theme of conversation. She looked down on the seethe of the market.
The sun was warm on her. Ciccio and Pancrazio were bargaining for
two cowskin rugs: she saw Ciccio standing with his head rather
forward. Her husband! She felt her heart die away within her.

All those other peasant women, did they feel as she did?--the same
sort of acquiescent passion, the same lapse of life? She believed
they did. The same helpless passion for the man, the same remoteness
from the world's actuality? Probably, under all their tension of
money and money-grubbing and vindictive mountain morality and rather
horrible religion, probably they felt the same. She was one with
them. But she could never endure it for a life-time. It was only a
test on her. Ciccio must take her to America, or England--to America
preferably.

And even as he turned to look for her, she felt a strange thrilling
in her bowels: a sort of trill strangely within her, yet extraneous
to her. She caught her hand to her flank. And Ciccio was looking up
for her from the market beneath, searching with that quick, hasty
look. He caught sight of her. She seemed to glow with a delicate
light for him, there beyond all the women. He came straight towards
her, smiling his slow, enigmatic smile. He could not bear it if he
lost her. She knew how he loved her--almost inhumanly, elementally,
without communication. And she stood with her hand to her side, her
face frightened. She hardly noticed him. It seemed to her she was
with child. And yet in the whole market-place she was aware of
nothing but him.

"We have bought the skins," he said. "Twenty-seven lire each."

She looked at him, his dark skin, his golden eyes--so near to her,
so unified with her, yet so incommunicably remote. How far off was
his being from hers!

"I believe I'm going to have a child," she said.

"Eh?" he ejaculated quickly. But he had understood. His eyes shone
weirdly on her. She felt the strange terror and loveliness of his
passion. And she wished she could lie down there by that