Adam's Breed by Radclyffe Hall — Read

Rosa spoke seldom but cried very often, so that poor Gian-Luca had not the advantage of hearing those consoling expressions of endearment that presumably help the infant subconscious to resign itself to life. Had he not possessed a great joy of living, in spite of colic and other tiresome things, Rosa's tears might very well have damped him; as it was they only irritated. Her tears had a way of dripping on to his head in the very middle of dinner, and he vaguely divined, as it were by instinct, that they spoilt the quality of the dinner itself, which was of course quite inexcusable.

He could not understand the element of tears, they were wet like his bath but they tasted different, and they came for all sorts of unexpected reasons, for instance when you bumped your head. Rosa would stare at Gian-Luca in silence, and then there would come a noise in her throat, sometimes a series of noises even; "Mio bambino -- " and then more noises and something splashing off her on to him. They usually spent the day at the Bosellis', but every night she returned with Gian-Luca to her father's tobacco shop down the street where she and her husband lived. She was young and bereaved; she gave of her milk but not yet of her heart, that was not to be expected; her heart was far away with quite another baby, whose food Gian-Luca was consuming.