II + 

Late that afternoon Gian-Luca got up and went for a walk alone. He could feel Maddalena watching from the window, and for just a moment he paused on the pavement, but he did not turn his head. He wished that she would not stand there at the window, with her questioning desolate eyes⁠—the eyes of a woman who was doomed to be childless⁠—why must she always reproach him with her eyes, was it his fault that she was childless? His feet dragged a little as he walked on slowly, not caring much where he went. And now he was passing the Foundling Hospital⁠—queer to be living so near that place; why had he chosen to live near that place? The thought had never occurred to him before⁠—yes, it certainly was rather queer. + 

The foundlings appeared to be happy enough; they were playing out in the garden, not troubling at all about the problems of fate. At their age he had troubled very much about such problems⁠—oh, very much he had troubled! He looked through the tall iron gates, and marveled at the noisy, shouting children, remembering the pain of his own lonely childhood; remembering bitterly, cruelly even, wounding himself in the process. + 

“Go on, go on!” he said, staring at the foundlings. “Go on, go on⁠—but you will not escape it, it is waiting for you round the corner!” But when he would have liked to tell them what was waiting, he found that he did not know. “Ma che!” he thought dully, “what does it all matter; they play, they shout, they think they are happy⁠—oh, well, and why not? It will come soon enough, that thing that is waiting round the corner.” Shrugging his shoulders he went on his way, and quite soon he forgot about the foundlings; forgot about everything except Gian-Luca, for whom he was deeply concerned. “I am ill,” he muttered, “I think I am ill.” He laid his fingers on his pulse, and then he felt frightened and walked more quickly, just to prove that he was not ill. + 

One or two women glanced at him in passing, struck by the expression of his face; a pale, handsome face with its arrogant mouth and its queer, inscrutable eyes. And presently a woman came up and touched him, murmuring something in his ear. + 

“Go to hell!” he said roughly, and pushed her with his arm so that she fell back frightened. + 

The noise of the traffic began to grow louder; he was suddenly conscious of the noise; he found himself walking in New Oxford Street without knowing how he had got there. All around him were shabby, insufferable people, and they jostled him as he walked. He felt sick with disgust at the contact with their bodies, and squaring his shoulders he thrust them aside; he would gladly have trampled on them. The stench of the traffic was heavy in his nostrils, the hot, greasy smell of engines; of monstrous engines, all spewing and belching up oil and petrol, and poisonous fumes from the pipes of their filthy exhausts. He hated these engines as though they had life, as though his hatred could harm them. They were foul, greedy feeders, and they stank of their food like creatures with rotting stomachs. + 

Oh, but he was tired! He had gone much too far; he had not intended to go far. His legs were trembling, and his hands, and his lips⁠—Wait, he would smoke, that would steady the trembling⁠—he groped for a cigarette. He found one, but now he could not find his matches⁠—what had he done with his matches? He began to ransack all his pockets in a panic, so intent on this process that he passed a tobacconist’s without having noticed the shop. Now the urge to smoke was becoming a torment, he must stop that trembling of his hands. The cruelty of it, to have come without his matches! So harmless a longing, just to light a cigarette, and yet he had come without his matches! He stood still, staring round him in a kind of despair, with the cigarette lolling from his mouth; then he started to run forward; he had seen a woman who was selling matches at the corner. + 

“Give me a box of matches!” he panted. “Quick, give me a box of matches!” Without waiting, he snatched what he wanted from her tray and started to light his cigarette. + 

The woman was battered and dirty and dejected; her face looked humble yet sly; for hers was the face of the intolerably poor, of those who must cringe to the lash of Fate and fool him behind his back. But by her side stood a thin little boy who clung to her threadbare jacket, and his face, unlike hers, was wonderfully quiet. Resigned, too, it seemed, as only the faces of very young children can be. Something was terribly wrong with his eyes⁠—what was it that was wrong with his eyes? The closed lids were shrunken and flat and disfigured⁠—so woebegone somehow, they looked, those closed lids, in spite of that quiet expression. And Gian-Luca, who cared not at all for children, must gaze and gaze at this child as though he were suddenly suffering with him, as though in some curious way he belonged to those woebegone, sightless eyes. + 

He said: “That child⁠—who is he, what is he?” + 

And the woman answered: “ ’E’s mine.” + 

And the child stood very still as though listening, with his head a little on one side. + 

Then Gian-Luca said: “But his eyes, his poor eyes⁠—” + 

And the woman answered: “They’re gone. ’E ain’t got no eyes, they was both taken out, they was all diseased like, ’is eyes.” + 

She lifted the lids one after the other, showing the empty sockets; and the child never spoke, and neither did he flinch, nor indeed show any resentment. + 

Down the street came a jolting coster’s barrow, and the barrow was full of spring flowers. All the colors of heaven seemed to be passing, drawn by a mangy donkey. The sun came out from behind a cloud, making the flowers more lovely: and because of a child who could not see, Gian-Luca realized the flowers. Then he looked again at the face of the child, at that face of dreadful resignation, and all in a moment he had pulled out his purse and was emptying it into the tray. Something rose up in his throat and choked him, and suddenly he was weeping; the great tears went trickling down his cheeks and splashed on his coat unheeded. + 

The woman mumbled her words of thanks: “Thank yer, mister; God bless yer, mister.” She thought he was mad, but what did that matter, he had given her nearly five pounds! She pushed the child forward: “Just look at ’im, mister⁠—ain’t he a poor little feller!” For she hoped that this softhearted, weeping madman might be tempted to still further madness. + 

But Gian-Luca had turned and was rushing away; away and away from the sightless child, away and away from suffering and affliction, and the great, blind sadness of the world. And even as he ran something ran beside him, he could feel it close at his elbow. A quiet, persistent, intangible presence⁠—the great, blind sadness of the world. + 