Virginia often came to sit with Ragna during these days of languor, and the girl welcomed her as she never had before. Virginia was touched by the affectionate warmth of Ragna's manner towards her and during these visits her busy fingers fashioned many little garments for the baby. He was fair, like his mother, round and rosy, with great blue eyes, and from the first moment they had laid him in her arms she had loved him with a fierce tenderness that was almost aggressive in its intensity. She looked to the child for compensation for all she had been through. Virginia often observed the change in the young mother's expression, when Carolina left the baby with her; all the languor, all the listlessness disappeared, the thin pale cheeks took on the colour and the eyes the brightness that was natural to them. Virginia said to her one day:
"I am sure that if you made an effort, Ragna cara, you could overcome this weakness. It is because you voluntarily let yourself go that you get no better. Tell me, why is it that you don't want to get well and strong?"
Ragna lifted her head. She was dressing little Egidio. Her eyes, torn from the contemplation of his plump rosy body had a startled expression.
"It was not very difficult to guess. But seriously, carissima, you should make an effort,--for the child's sake, at least."
"I suppose I ought to, for the child's sake," said Ragna slowly, caressing the coral-pink feet and dimpled legs, "but I can't somehow, I can't make the effort. I--I'm afraid."
The blood rose in Ragna's cheek; Virginia leaned forward and patted her hand.
"I understand, poverina,--but what would you have? We married women are not our own mistresses,--it is the way of the world. The Creator has willed that some of us serve our Purgatory on earth."
Before she left, she kissed Ragna tenderly, and murmured, "Poverina, I am sorry--but you have the bimbo! Let that make up to you for the rest!"
She was thinking of Egidio with his mouth like that of a beast.
After the Valentinis moved, Virginia was not able to come so often; they lived further apart, and her visits in consequence became less frequent. Indeed, this had been part of Valentini's intention in going so far. He wished, partly from jealousy, and partly from mingled dislike and fear of Virginia to remove Ragna from her close companionship and the moving offered a good pretext for this, without the risk of offending the susceptibilities of his friend Ferrati.