Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/88

 women alone together in the world. I must not forget that. I owe her everything in the world. But for her I shouldn't be here in this beautiful spot, in this interesting and historic country." But almost at once she was overcome with a loathing for the villa, for Brinoë, for all of Italy. She had to live there. She could see no way of ever escaping this alien, unsympathetic land where everything seemed romantic and untidy, fantastically beautiful and reeking with smells.

"If only I could speak Italian," she thought, "I could at least talk to the servants now and then. I must try and learn next winter."

But she knew she never would learn. She had never learned anything. There was nothing, she told herself, that she could do. She was not clever enough.

"I will go out into the garden until I've recovered my temper."

In the garden the air seemed cool and there was a smell of fresh earth coming from the trench that had been dug for the cesspool. The moon had risen to the top of the sky and its light fell full upon the roof of fading plantain leaves, so that the carpet of moss below was flecked all over with a pattern of silver. Usually she was afraid at night in the garden, with that fear of darkness and the unknown that had paralyzed her timid nature since childhood. And there was something special about this garden. She always had a feeling of being watched by invisible eyes. It was too old, too haunted by its incal-