The man was hopelessly in love with her. She saw his broad, rather short red face gazing up at her fixedly²: till his wife turned too to look, then he picked up his glass and tossed the wine down his throat. The wife stared long at the figures on the balcony. She was handsome and rather gloomy, and surely older than he, with that great difference that lies between a rather overwhelming, superior woman over forty, and her more irresponsible husband of thirty-five or so. It seemed like the difference of a whole generation. “He is my generation,” thought Juliet, “and she is Maurice’s generation.” Juliet was not yet thirty.

The peasant in his white cotton trousers and pale pink shirt, and battered³ old straw hat, was attractive, so clean, and full of the cleanliness of health. He was stout⁴ and broad, and seemed shortish, but his flesh was full of vitality⁵, as if he were always about to spring up into movement, to work, even, as she had seen him with the child, to play. He was the type of Italian peasant that wants to make an offering of himself, passionately⁶ wants to make an offering of himself, of his powerful flesh and thudding blood-stroke. But he was also completely a peasant, in that he would wait for the woman to make the move. He would hang round in a long, consuming passivity of desire, hoping, hoping for the woman to come for him. But he would never try to advance to her: never. She would have to make the advance. Only he would hang round, within reach.

Feeling her look at him, he flung off his old straw hat, showing his round, close-cropped brown head, and reached out with a large brown-red hand for the great loaf, from which he broke a piece and started chewing with bulging⁷ cheek. He knew she was looking at him. And she had such power over him, the hot inarticulate animal, with such a hot, massive blood-stream down his great veins⁸! He was hot through with

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