Small witless helpless and thin breath. But bend and hear: a voice. A sparrow under the wheels of Juggernaut, shaking shaker of the earth. Please, mister God, big mister God! Goodbye, big world!....... Aber das ist eine Schweinerei!

Great bows on her slim bronze shoes: spurs of a pampered fowl.

The lady goes apace, apace, apace..... Pure air on the upland road. Trieste is waking rawly: raw sunlight over its huddled browntiled roofs, testudoform; a multitude of prostrate bugs awwait a national deliverance. Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife: the busy housewife is astir, sloe-eyed, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand..... Pure air and silence on the upland road and hoofs. A girl on horseback. Hedda! Hedda Gabler!

 The sellers offer on their altars the first fruits: green-flecked lemons, jewelled cherries, shameful peaches with torn leaves. The carriage passes through the lane of canvas stalls, its wheel-spokes spinning in the glare. Make way! Her father and his son sit in the carriage. Owlish wisdom stares from their eyes brooding upon the lore of their Summa contra Gentiles.

She thinks the Italian gentlemen were right to haul Ettore Albini, the critic of the Secolo, from the stalls because he did not stand up when the band played the Royal March. She heard that at supper. Ay. They love their country when they are quite sure which country it is.

She listens: virgin most prudent.

A skirt caught back by her sudden moving knee; a white lace edging of an underskirt lifted unduly; a legstretched web of stocking. Si pol?

I play lightly, softly singing, John Dowland's languid song. Loth to depart: I too am loth to go.