can I? My soul is inside him, and I am far from contradicting him when he is trying with all his might to do something that he knows about. He won’t die, and they won’t kill him. No! The stream flows into him from the heart of the world: and from me.—I tell you, because you saved his life, and therefore we belong to the same thing, you and I and he—and Cipriano. But you should not misjudge me. That other way of women, where a woman keeps her own soul—ah, what is it but weariness!”
“And the men?”
“Ah! if there are men whose souls are warm and brave, how they comfort one’s womb, Caterina!”
Kate hung her head, stubborn and angry at being put down from her eminence.—The slave morale! she said to herself. The miserable old trick of a woman living just for the sake of a man. Only living to send her soul with him, inside his precious body. And to carry his precious seed in her womb! Herself, apart from this, nothing.
Kate wanted to make her indignation thorough, but she did not quite succeed. Somewhere, secretly and angrily, she envied Teresa her dark eyes with the flame in them and their savage assurance. She envied her her serpent-delicate fingers. And above all, she envied her, with repining, the comfort of a living man permanent in her womb. And the secret, savage indomitable pride in her own womanhood, that rose from this.
In the warm morning after the rain, the frogs were whirring frantically. Across the lake, the mountains were blue black, and little pieces of white, fluffy vapour wandered low across the trees. Clouds were along the mountain-tops, making a level sky-line