Chapter 15 - The place called Califano
There is no mistake about it, Alvina was a lost girl. She was cut off from everything she belonged to. Ovid isolated in Thrace' might well lament. The soul itself needs its own mysterious nourishment. This nourishment lacking, nothing is well.
At Pescocalascio it was the mysterious influence of the mountains and valleys themselves which seemed always to be annihilating the Englishwoman: nay, not only her, but the very natives themselves. Ciccio and Pancrazio clung to her, essentially, as if she saved them also from extinction. It needed all her courage. Truly, she had to support the souls of the two men.
At first she did not realize. She was only stunned with the strangeness of it all: startled, half-enraptured with the terrific beauty of the place
