At the news, Giulio repressed the confession which was on the point of escaping from his soul, and repeated resolutely to himself: “No, papa, I shall tell you nothing; I shall guard my secret for the sake of being able to work for you; I shall recompense you in another way for the sorrow I am causing you; I shall study enough at school to win promotion; the important point is to help you to earn our living, and to relieve you of the fatigue which is killing you.”
And so he went on, and two months more passed, of labor by night and weakness by day, of desperate efforts on the part of the son, and of bitter reproaches on the part of the father. But the worst of it was, that the latter grew gradually colder towards the boy, only spoke to him rarely, as though he had been a recreant son, of whom there was nothing any longer to be expected, and almost avoided meeting his glance. And Giulio perceived this and suffered from it, and when his father's back was turned, he threw him a furtive kiss, stretching forth his face with a sentiment of sad and dutiful tenderness; and between sorrow and fatigue, he grew thin and pale, and he was forced to neglect his studies still further. He knew full well that there must be an end to it some day, and every evening he said to himself, “I will not get up tonight;” but when the clock struck twelve, at the moment when he should vigorously have reaffirmed his resolution, he felt remorse: it seemed to him, that by remaining in bed he should be failing in a duty, and robbing his father and the family of a lira. He would rise, thinking that some night his father would wake up and discover him, or that he would find the decep-
