e hated him. He seemed to want to crush her altogether.
She was always making little plans in her mind--how she could get
out of that great cruel valley and escape to Rome, to English
people. She would find the English Consul and he would help her. She
would do anything rather than be really crushed. She knew how easy
it would be, once her spirit broke, for her to die and be buried in
the cemetery at Pescocalascio.

And they would all be so sentimental about her--just as Pancrazio
was. She felt that in some way Pancrazio had killed his wife--not
consciously, but unconsciously, as Ciccio might kill _her_.
Pancrazio would tell Alvina about his wife and her ailments. And he
seemed always anxious to prove that he had been so good to her. No
doubt he had been good to her, also. But there was something
underneath--malevolent in his spirit, some caged-in sort of cruelty,
malignant beyond his control. It crept out in his stories. And it
revealed itself in his fear of his dead wife. Alvina knew that in
the night the elderly man was afraid of his dead wife, and of her
ghost or her avenging spirit. He would huddle over the fire in fear.
In the same way the cemetery had a fascination of horror for
him--as, she noticed, for most of the natives. It was an ugly,
square place, all stone slabs and wall-cupboards, enclosed in
four-square stone walls, and lying away beneath Pescocalascio
village obvious as if it were on a plate.

"That is our cemetery," Pancrazio said, pointing it out to her,
"where we shall all be carried some day."

And there was fear, horror in his voice. He told her how the men had
carried his wife there--a long journey over the hill-tracks, almost
two hours.

These were days of waiting--horrible days of waiting for Ciccio to
be called up. One batch of young men left the village--and there was
a lugubrious sort of saturnalia, men and women alike got rather
drunk, the young men left amid howls of lamentation and shrieks of
distress. Crowds accompanied them to Ossona, whence they were
marched towards the railway. It was a horrible event.

A shiver of horror and death went through the valley. In a
lugubrious way, they seemed to enjoy it.

"You'll never be satisfied till you've gone," she said to Ciccio.
"Why don't they be quick and call you?"

"It will be next week," he said, looking at her darkly. In the
twilight he came to her, when she could hardly see him.

"Are you sorry you came here with me, Allaye?" he