She always felt very wretched when she was alone or with her father; helpless, without a guide, knocked about by a rushing wind, drawn in by a whirlpool. But if Antonio Amati showed his manly face, his genial strength; if she heard his firm, rather rough voice, that was smooth for her; if his hand just touched hers, so that she felt a magnetic influence, warmth, youthful vivacity, go through her nerves, she knew she was guided, protected, started on the way of life and happiness. The black clouds moved off with one breath; she saw the blue sky; the fever grew milder, went off altogether, and the sombre ghosts, the fears that blanched her lips, went off at the same time; she quieted down as if a heavenly benediction enfolded her in its sphere of help. She felt like a child again when he was there: Amati was the firmest, safest, strongest.
So she loved him, innocently, unconsciously. This kind of love allows of great humility, great tenderness; it was pure and fervent, it refreshed her. With their different ground-work, the two sorts of love understood each other, melted into and completed one another. That spiritual harmony that is the soul's finest, but also rarest and shortest, experience began the first day she from her dull balcony, he from his stern study, that saw so much agony, beheld each other. Wherever the two minds, feelings, personalities met, the harmony got greater. When she raised her great thoughtful eyes to his, asking in all simplicity for help and affection, he felt his heart bound with a longing for sacrifice. They understood each other perfectly without speaking.
He came from the land, from a small, out-of-the-way provincial town that had little communication with Naples; he had made his name and fortune by struggling with life and death, with men's indifference and hatred, thus getting a formidable idea of his own powers, and only believing in himself. He had plebeian blood and a powerful mind; none of the refinement that comes from breeding and surroundings, the triumph of ideals.
How different from her! She was the daughter of a noble house, refined by instinct, breeding, and surroundings; used to live in meditation and prayer, without a particle of self-reliance to stand out against the ruin of her family, or withstand her father's ruling passion, to save her name or herself. She lived amid privations and discomforts; she had set out too early on the sorrowful stages of the Via Crucis; an unhappy future was before her. How different and far off these two were!