Still, through that life of useful work for himself and others, through the seeming hardness, hurry, even scientific brutality of his constant activity, which was made up for by his noble daily sacrifices, that silently attractive figure pleased Dr. Antonio Amati's fancy. Gradually it took its place each morning among the things he admired and liked to find in their places every day: his books, old leather note-books, some mementos of childhood and youth, a wax model of his dead sister's little hand, an old photograph of his mother, who lived in Campobasso province, a local accent he had not lost, in spite of living eighteen years in Naples and his travels in France and Germany.
Bianca Maria came into this harmonious atmosphere, that gently satisfied this strong man's eyes and heart. Antonio Amati did not try to see her oftener, nor to know and speak to her; it was enough to see her in the early morning, behind her balcony windows, look down vaguely into the dull, damp court, then disappear as slowly as she came--a quiet, solitary figure, not sorrowful, but not smiling. Between one patient going and another coming, Dr. Amati got up from his desk, and went as far as the balcony; in one or other of these little walks, that seemed to serve him as a pause, a rest, a distraction between one bit of work finished and another begun, he caught sight of Bianca Maria's pale, thoughtful face; and for two years that satisfied him. It is true that sometimes in these two years he had met her on the stairs, or in the Rossi Palace dark entrance, with her father or Margherita; he took off his hat, and she acknowledged his bow unsmilingly. She, too, knew him well, seeing him every day; but she looked him in the face frankly, with none of that extreme reserve, half smile, half sham indifference, or any of the little coquetries of commonplace girls. Frankly and innocently she looked at him a minute, returned his bow, and then her proud, gentle eyes took their vague thoughtful expression again.
They did not make daily appointments to see each other--he was too serious, too engrossed in duty to do so, and she was a simple creature, living too solitary an inward life to think of it--only they saw each other every day, and got accustomed to it.
