Adam's Breed by Radclyffe Hall — Read

The spring is perhaps the time of all others when the lonely most realize their loneliness; and this had always been the case with Gian-Luca -- he felt terribly lonely in the spring. His desire for companionship had been growing of late, becoming a kind of craving; even Fabio and Teresa saw more of him now; he would hang about the shop in his time off from the Doric; or if they were too busy he would go to Nerone's on the pretext of buying cigarettes. Schmidt had gone back to Switzerland, and Gian-Luca did not regret him. He hated Schmidt as one hates the creature who has helped one to gratify one's lower instincts; unjust, perhaps, since but for those instincts there would be no occasion to hate. He might have made friends of his fellow headwaiters, Riccardo, the head of the large restaurant, or Giuliano, who had charge of the grillroom. But he felt that they were jealous, as indeed they were, of the favor he stood in with Millo; and this knowledge made him stiff and a little awkward with them, while they on their part always eyed him with suspicion, as one who was waiting to jump into their shoes. Geppe, Gian-Luca could not endure, and besides he was more than four years his junior; Geppe, who was always asking him for money in order to run after girls. He still feared Berta with her flashing brown eyes, her temperamental moods and her affectations. He felt that Berta would have liked him to propose, and he thought her extremely unattractive. "It is strange," he would think, "that I have so few friends. " And then he would wonder if the fault lay in himself, and this thought would make him unhappy.

But the spring that was thrusting the sap along the branches and filling the parks with flowers and lovers, and making Teresa's old heart feel young because of her new macaroni factory -- the spring brought Maddalena to the Doric; and chance or the spring, both impulsive and freakish, took Gian-Luca down to the still-room one morning, and there he saw Maddalena.