Gianna had muttered mumbled, rebellious words; he did not seem other than a child to her; she had been one of those present at this birth on the shining sands of the Edera.

He could not sleep.  He could only listen to the distant murmur of the river.  With dawn the women awoke.  Nerina came running down the steep stone stair and went to let out and feed her charges, the fowls.  Gianna went to the well in the court with her bronze pitcher and pail.  Clelia Alba cut great slices of bread at the kitchen table; and hooked the cauldron of maize flour to the chain above the fire on the kitchen hearth.  He could not wait for their greetings, their questions, the notice which his changed mien would surely attract.  For the first time in all his twenty-four years of life he went out of the house without a word to his mother, and took his way to the river again; for the first time he was neglectful of his cattle and forgetful of the land.

Nerina came in from the fowl-house with alarm on her face.

“Madama Clelia!” she said timidly, “Adone has gone away without feeding and watering the oxen.  May I do it?”

“Can you manage them, little one?”

“Oh, yes; they love me.”

“Go then; but take care.”

“She is a good child!” said Gianna.  “The beasts won’t hurt her.  They know their friends.”

Clelia Alba, to whom her own and her son’s dignity was dear, said nothing of her own displeasure and surprise at Adone’s absence.  But she was only the more distressed by it.  Never, since he had been old enough to work at all, had he been missing in the hours of labour.

“I only pray,” she thought, “that no woman may have hold of him.”

Adone hardly knew what he did; he was like a man who has had a blow on the temple; his sight was troubled; his blood seemed to burn in his brain.  He wandered from habit through the field and down to the river, to the spot where from his infancy he had been used to bathe.  He took off his clothes and waded into the water, which was cold as snow after the night.  The shock of the cold, and the sense of the running current laving his limbs, restored him in a measure to himself.  He swam down the stream in the shadow of the early morning.  The air was full of the scent of dog-roses and flowering thyme; he turned on his back and floated; between him and the sky a hawk passed; the bell of the church was tolling for the diurnal mass.  He ran along in the sun, as it grew warm, to dry his skin by movement, as his wont was.  He was still stupefied by the fear which had fallen upon him; but the water had cooled and braced him.

He had forgotten his mother, the cattle, the labours awaiting him; his whole mind was absorbed in this new horror sprung up in his path, none knew from where, or by whom begotten.  The happy, unconscious stream ran singing at his feet as the nightingale sang in the acacia thickets, its brown mountain water growing green and limpid as it passed over submerged grass and silver sand.