Marcia turned her back to the shining villa and looked down over the great Campagna stretching away darkly under the stars, with here and there the gleam of a shepherd's fire, built to ward off the poison in the air.
'Things are not very just,' she said slowly.
'Not very,' he agreed; 'and one has little faith that they ever will be--either in this world or the next.'
'It would be comfortable, wouldn't it, if you could only believe that people are unfortunate as a punishment--because they deserve to be.'
'It would be a beautiful belief, but one which you can scarcely hold in Italy.'
With a sudden motion he threw away his cigarette over the balustrade and immediately lit another. Marcia watched his face in the flare of the match. The eyes seemed deeper-set than usual, the jaw more boldly marked, and there were nervous lines about the mouth. His face seemed to have grown thinner in the last few weeks.
They turned away and sauntered toward the ilex grove.
'There are, however, compensations,' he went on presently. 'Our poor peasants do not have all the pleasures, but they do not have all the pains, either. There are a great many girls in Castel Vivalanti who will never have a birthday ball'--he glanced from the lighted villa behind them to the glowing vista in front, the green stretch of the ilex walk with the shimmering fountain at the end--'whose lives will be very bare, indeed. They will work and eat and sleep, and love and perhaps hate, and that is all. You have many other pleasures which they could never understand. You enjoy the _Egoist_, for instance. But also'--he paused--'you can suffer many things they cannot understand. You are an individual, while they are merely human beings. Gervasio's stepmother married a husband, and doubtless loved him very much and cried for him a week after he was dead. Then she married another, and saw no difference between him and the first. She may have to work hard, and she may be hungry sometimes, but she will escape the worst suffering in life, which you, with all your privileges, may not escape, Marcia.'
'One would rather not escape it,' she answered. 'I should rather feel what there is to feel.'
'Ah!' he breathed, 'so should we all! And these poor devils of peasants, who can't feel anything but their hunger and weariness, lose the most of life. They are not even human beings; they are merely beasts of burden, hard-working, patient, unthinking oxen, who go the way they are driven, not dreaming of their strength. That is the unfairness; that is where society owes them a debt; they have no chance to develop. However,' he broke off with a short laugh, 'it's not the time to bother you with other people's troubles--on your birthday night. We will hope, after all, that you may not have any very grave ones of your own.'