Nostalgia

by Grazia Deledda

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Gabbia. A special cart used in the Mantuan district for carrying wheat, maize, etc.

[6] Gnocchi. A favourite Italian sweet dish.

CHAPTER III

Again the crazy little carriage belonging to Petrin il Gliglo rolled along the river-bank. The night was hot, dark, and damp. After a few sentences on indifferent matters, Antonio and Regina had fallen silent, as if overcome by the quiet of the country and the night. They were silent, but Regina spoke within herself, as was her habit, and made note of a sad discovery. Antonio was changed! No; this time it really was not fancy! He was changed.

"He kissed me almost in a frenzy the moment he got out of the train—as if he had feared he would never see me again. Then all of a sudden his expression changed. Something gloomy, something deprecating, came into his eyes. Has he lost his faith in me? Is there something between us now? Well! of course it's like this at first. To-morrow the constraint will have passed off."

To drive away all vestige of fear she spoke to him again; but her heart was thumping uncomfortably, and when she pressed his hand and found it inert and cold, unexplained anxiety again took possession of her. It was almost as bad as her terror during those days when she had been vainly expecting a letter from him.

"Oh, what is it?" she thought. "Has he not forgiven me?"

"Feel!" she said, putting Antonio's hand against her side. The hand became suddenly animated.

"Is your heart still bad?" he asked, as if bethinking himself.

"No! It's beating for joy!" she replied, and talked on very fast. "Yesterday I went to the old painted mill, to eat gnocchi. It was such fun! There was a splendid sunset. What a character that old miller is!"

She told the miller's prophecy, then went on to describe a visit to the Master and his family.

"He's a character too! But he's really quite mad. He wants to send the children to Rome—the boy to make his fortune, the girl to become famous. He says——" and she mimicked the Master's speeches and voice.

Antonio laughed, but his laugh was cold and contemptuous, and seemed far away.

"Oh, what is it?" thought Regina, overwhelmed by unexpected sadness. That scoffing laugh was new in Antonio. He was scornful. Was it of herself?

Fancies! Folly!

"As soon as we're alone, I'll take him by the shoulders, shake him and cry, 'What on earth's the matter with you? Haven't you forgiven me? Don't let us have any more nonsense, please! There has been more than enough!'"

They were silent again. The chaise rolled on through the dark warm night, through the pungent perfume of the motionless vegetation. The young trees along the river were black in the darkness, blacker even than the darkness. Everything was silent, everything exhaled sweet odours. From the hot ground, from the damp wayside weeds, from the paths bathed in dew, rose an intoxicating scent, a silent breath, dreamy and voluptuous. Beside every bush seemed to stand a woman waiting for her lover, her desire and her joy filling the emptiness of the hot, rich night.

"To-morrow we'll go out by moonlight," said Regina, who could not keep quite silent. "The night I arrived there was a beautiful moon, wasn't there, Petrin?"

The driver made no reply.

"He's asleep. We shall be upset," said Antonio.

"Oh, no! The old horse is quite used to it," returned Regina, and sure now that Petrin was not listening, she added, softly, "How wretched I was that evening!"

"Were you?" said Antonio, as if remembering nothing of what had passed.

Regina turned round, astonished and trembling. She had no strength left.

"Antonio," she whispered, her arm round his neck, "Why are you like this? What is it? What's the matter?"

"Do you ask?" he murmured, not looking at her. His voice was hardly a breath, but a breath in which Regina felt the raging of a storm of resentment. Again she was afraid.

"You don't mean to forgive me!" she said, separating herself from him. But already he had turned and pressed her to him, his lips seeking hers with a fervour which seemed rather of despair than of passion.

Adamo's voice rang out from the bank.

"Antonio—o! Regina—a!"

Then Petrin's broad back swayed from right to left, and his whip cracked.

"Quel ragass m'ha fatto ciappar pagura (That boy made me jump)," said the man, as if talking in his sleep. Antonio and Regina moved apart, and she blushed in the darkness as if new to love.

Her heart was beating strongly, but between its strokes of joy were shudders of sickening grief.

After supper, as on the night of Regina's arrival, they all went out, except Signora Caterina. Toscana and her brothers ran about as usual, leaving their sister and her husband far behind.

"Yes," said Regina; "my mother is right. You look ill! Surely you've been having fever!"

He did not answer at once. He was thinking. He seemed seeking an appropriate beginning for a speech and unsuccessful in finding it.

"Your mother herself looks out of sorts," he said at last. "What distress you must have caused her, Regina!"

"I? But I never told her a word!"

"Didn't you?"

"Don't you believe me? To explain your silence, I said you were ill."

"Oh, did you?" he repeated, still incredulous. "Well, I was imagining it was her advice had made you less—unkind."

"Unkind? What do you mean?" she asked, coldly.

Antonio was perhaps frightened in his turn. Had he deceived himself, thinking Regina penitent and ready to come home? He became animated, and found that beginning of speech which he had sought. The hour of explanation had come.

Regina asked nothing better; but to her surprise she did not feel the commotion, the joy, the tenderness, which she had anticipated. She was distressed. Antonio had forgiven her; he had suffered; he had come, resolved to take her back at all costs; he loved her more than ever, with true passion; he was united to her by all the strong ties of his heart and his senses. But she was not content; she was not properly stirred. Something was standing between her husband and herself—something inexorable. They walked as of old, their arms round each other, their fingers interlaced; but there was a whole gulf between them, a whole immense river of cold, colourless water, perfidiously silent, like that river down there below the road, scarce visible between the black trees in the black night.

Regina was certainly the clearer-sighted of the two, and she now saw a mysterious thing. Once it was her soul which had escaped Antonio, hiding itself behind a world of littlenesses, of vanity, of vain desires and ambitions; now, on the contrary, it was his soul which some occult and violent force was trying to wrest away from her. She attempted to fathom this mystery.

"What is it? He loves me; he has forgiven me! But he mistrusts, is afraid of me. Why is this?"

"Regina," said Antonio, "you must explain to me what you are intending to do."

"You know already."

"I don't. I don't understand. Your last letter was even worse and uglier than the first. I am not going to reproach you—as you say, it would be useless; but another man in my place—well, never mind! You have told me more than a hundred times that I don't understand you. Now, to show you at least my good-will, I ask you to explain."

"But didn't I write it?" she cried, half humble, half pettish. "I wrote, 'It all depends upon you.'"

"Do you mean you will come back with me to Rome?"

"Yes."

"Oh, very well. I am quite ready to forget all that has taken place. But now I must know one thing more. Why have you given up your idea so soon? I say idea, not caprice, because it has seemed to me, and seems still, a very serious matter."

"How can I tell? Are we able to explain our ideas or caprices, or whatever you choose to call them? Have you never contradicted yourself? One thinks one way to-day, another to-morrow. Are we masters of ourselves? You said a minute ago, 'If I were another man.' I understood what you meant; that if you had been another man you would have ill-treated, insulted me. But, on the contrary, you are very kind—perhaps kinder than before. Can you explain to yourself why, instead of hating me for the trick I have played you, you care for me perhaps more than before?"

She spoke not entirely of conviction; but she wished to suggest to Antonio the line he had better take. She believed she had succeeded, for he became thoughtful as if repeating her questions to himself, and presently said with a slight smile—

"Well, I dare say you are right!"

"Don't let us say any more about it," cried Regina, imitating the Master again. "It has been a freak—a folly of youth. Let us draw a veil over the past."

"You know you have humiliated me," urged Antonio; "it was a blow in my face—a betrayal—and besides——"

"Oh, don't we all make mistakes? What about all the other women? Those who really betray their husbands?"

"Yes," he answered her, quickly, "and the husbands who betray their wives! Generally it's the bad husband who makes the bad wife. But I never gave you any cause, Regina! What had you to complain of in me? True enough I am not a lord, but you knew that from the first. Had I promised you more than I could give? Well, you should have had patience—confidence. Our circumstances may improve any day. I shall never be rich, but, of course, in a little time my position must alter to a certain extent——"

"Oh, that'll do! That's enough," protested Regina. "You did not guess that my fancy would pass away so soon?"

"Did you think it yourself when you wrote? My dear, things seriously done have serious effects. Well, we will cancel the past, as the Master says. I've got one thing to tell you, however. Your letter has done us some good after all. I saw at once that in one sense you were right. Everybody has to try to get on, to push, to solicit, to intrigue, 'Out with you, sir, in with me!' and all that. 'Come,' I said to myself, 'isn't it just possible I might do something?' Well, I began my solicitations. I set Arduina to work. I had her running about the town all day. I sent her to the Senator, the Princess, to her journalists and deputies——"

"Of course you didn't tell her——" interrupted Regina.

"I told her no more than this: 'I want to be secretary to some Minister. Find me a berth, and I'll get you six subscribers to your paper among my colleagues.' She laughed and went to work, and I set others in motion too. But it was all no good; there wasn't a vacant post anywhere. Then Arduina gave me an idea. You remember how the Princess sent for me one day to ask information about the Stock Exchange, and how I saw she was beginning to be suspicious of Cavaliere R——? Well, Arduina, who is no fool at bottom, sounded Marianna. She found out it was just as I thought. She wanted to put some one to look over his shoulder. 'Why shouldn't you become her confidential agent?' said Arduina. So I went to the Princess and offered my services. I said the office of a spy did not seem to me very delicate, but that I would accept it, as it was a case of urgent necessity. She convinced me that the indelicacy was on the Cavaliere's part, and said that if I succeeded in being useful she would be most grateful. That was on the 5th. Four days later I proved that the Cavaliere R—— was speculating with her money more for himself than for her."

"How did you manage it?" asked Regina, vaguely uneasy at Antonio's relation.

"I will explain. You must know that Madame, for all her riches, is as ignorant as a child about money affairs. She doesn't understand a thing about banking, stocks, shares, book-keeping, and so forth, and naturally has to put herself entirely into the hands of some person who acts for her, and to accept all propositions and all results of operations without any control. The Cavaliere R—— has been serving her in this way for many years, and no doubt at first he was perfectly scrupulous in his operations and in the statement of accounts. But presently, aware that she knew nothing whatever about these affairs and accepted with her eyes shut whatever he chose to say, he thought he might profit without even risk of being found out. Marianna, however, has been observing for some time that the proceeds of the speculations have kept continually diminishing, which the Cavaliere accounted for by the special conditions of the money market, by monetary crises, by the rupture of commercial contracts, by the war, etc. At her instigation, Madame made me the proposition I told you of. Well, as she pressed me, I accepted the job, and told her to put me in full possession of some recent transaction that I might verify it. Next morning Madame sent me one of his statements, on which I read, among other things—

"'Exchange of 10000.00 marks, at 123.20 lire; acquired 8 shares of Acqua Marcia at 1465.00 lire.'

"I consulted at the office the prices on the Exchange reported in the Gazzetta Ufficiale and found it was different from what he had put down. Not satisfied with this, at lunch-time I went to the Chamber of Commerce and got a list of the Exchanges of the preceding day, and made certain of the difference I had already made out: the Berlin Exchange was at 123.37 lire, and the shares of Acqua Marcia were quoted at 1460.00 lire. Consequently, Cavaliere R—— had put 57 lire into his own pocket. Then I made Madame give me all his statements up to the end of June, which she had kept mixed up with her private letters and newspapers. By the help of the bulletins of the Exchange and other publications which I got through a stock-broker I know, I proved that in these operations alone the man had made a profit of 137.45 lire."

"And then?"

"Oh, then Madame thanked me very warmly and said she'd take the opportunity of her going away to relieve the Cavaliere of his services, and on her return would ask me to undertake the speculating. She left home on the 12th, and has given me a whole lot of matters to disentangle before her return. I must look up my German a bit, for she has no end of business with Germany."

Instinctively, Regina took her hand away from Antonio's, and said—

"Well?"

"Well?" repeated Antonio.

"How much is she to pay you?"

"For the present, a hundred lire a month; but a little later, you see, I'm to become her factotum. I must grind at the German," he repeated, seeming much pre-occupied with this question of the language. He talked on about it, but Regina was no longer listening.

"Let's go back!" she said, turning suddenly. "You must be tired! Toscana! Gigi! Shall we go in? Here they come! Antonio, it's a funny thing, but, do you know, I dreamt something very like this the first night I was here."

She told her dream of the ten thousand lire, Marianna, and the fireman.

"There's no doubt at all that dreams are very queer things!"

He made no reply.

"And why," asked Regina, after a moment of hesitation, "why didn't you write to me?"

"What was I to write to you? You had settled the question for yourself. I wished to settle it in another manner, and a discussion by letter seemed useless. Besides, I had decided to come to you here."

Antonio's explanation was rather lame, but Regina did not insist. He went on to describe his plans for the future.

"Next year I'll go up for the examination and pass at latest in October. Meantime, we can count on 325 lire the month, net and certain. You see, our position is already a little better. I have sub-let the Apartment, and I've seen a capital mezzanino, in Via Balbo, for 80 lire. Three first-rate rooms looking on the street, and one, a large one, on the courtyard; all very light and sunny. We can have two drawing-rooms."

Regina listened, but she felt something which was not joy. Antonio's news was not altogether cheering, and his voice seemed entirely changed. It was the monotonous, distant voice of one not the merry and happy Antonio of old. It moved her to positive pity.

Two drawing-rooms! Yes, she understood his pre-occupation. He wanted to give her something of what in her infatuation she had dreamed, in her foolishness had asked. He wanted to give her at least the illusion that she was a fine lady, prosperous and fashionable. And he made his offer quite humbly, as if he were the guilty one, ready for any weakness, if only he might be forgiven! She would have preferred a tragedy of reproaches, and then the sweetness of pardon; a storm which would leave their domestic heaven clearer than before.

On the other hand, she realised that Antonio's love was blinder, more abject, than she had imagined; in this, at least, there was some satisfaction.

They walked towards the house, so absorbed in their prosy talk that they no longer noticed the mystery of the hot, sweet night brooding over the colourless river, the dark sky, the motionless black woods, like the profile of a forest sculptured on a bronze bas-relief.

From time to time flashed the violet gleam of a bicycle lamp, which went silently by, preceded by a big butterfly of shadow. At intervals a few voices vibrated in the silence and immobility of the sleeping world. The magic of dream floated in the warm, soft air. But the young pair no longer felt the magic. Antonio was hot about his plans; Regina overcome by pity for the man whom her folly had so miserably and so profoundly changed.

CHAPTER IV

They returned to Rome about the middle of August, and changed their dwelling. The mezzanino was really charming, but one of the rooms remained almost empty for lack of furniture.

"We might let it," suggested Regina.

"Fie! Who's the little bourgeoise now?" cried Antonio, indignant.

"Oh, one changes as life goes on," she said, not without bitterness; "one gets older, gets whipped, ends by adapting oneself to anything."

She did in fact adapt herself—without knowing why. In herself and in her surroundings, in the quiet life which she and Antonio had resumed, she was sometimes conscious of an emptiness like that in the new Apartment, but she no longer rebelled.

After dinner they would go out arm in arm in the good bourgeois fashion, stifling the gentle tedium of their existence at the Café Aragno or in Piazza Colonna, oftener in the streets and avenues round Piazza della Stazione. The little tables in front of the Café Gambrinus or Café Morteo were always surrounded by people who at any rate seemed very lively. Crowds tramped the broad streets, bright with electricity and moonlight. Beyond the great white square, where the twin lights of the trams shone like drops of water, the station carriages looked like files of monstrous sleeping insects.

After the long silences and solemn solitudes of the Po, back now in the crowd, in the cold, sharp splendour of the electric lights hidden like little moons among the black ilices, Regina felt herself in a dream. The cafés were overflown with light. Livid reflections came from some empty table. Vestiges of lunar rays made their way through the green shadows, the strange semi-darkness of the trees. The crowd rolled past and looked into the café, merry with a second crowd reflected and multiplied by mirrors. Now and then, in the smoke-wreathed background of the Morteo, hovered the moving and screaming figure of a singer, whose coarse notes were mixed with the melancholy scraping of violins and the buzz of the people. A hundred faces, derisive but brutally pleased, looked at the swaying, strident figure. Regina found a curious interest in watching the crowd, the faces, the light dresses of the women, the physiognomy of the men who ogled the singer, the pitiable arms of this pitiable creature.

One evening a little girl with thick hair falling in a red plait over thin shoulders, with a green hat and a short green dress, which left half-bare her meagre legs and big feet cased in yellow shoes, reminded her of a water bird. Then suddenly, under those trees blackened and burnt up by the heat of a thousand burning breaths, she thought of her great river, of the poplars rising at this hour like candles lighted by the moon, of the white line of the river-banks cleaving the immense circle of the plain; and she marvelled that she no longer felt the nostalgia which she had known of old.

Antonio proposed to sit down at the café, but Regina preferred moving round with the crowd, going as far as Via Volturno, where the voices of the melon-sellers crossed, followed, answered each other jealously, like the crowing of cocks.

"Favorischino, Signori! Favorischino!"

On the black, damp tables, cut melons showed rosy in the trembling lamp-light, and diffused a fresh and agreeable odour like great red flowers. Children, workmen, a pair of students, a woman or two, bent over the pink flesh of the juicy slices.

"Favorischino, Signori! Behold what beauties! Real blood! Will you buy one, lady?"

There was a stall at the corner of the street against the wall, and the vendor looked condescendingly at the people clustered round his banks of melons; but if any one noticed his money-box, he turned anxiously and put on an air of preternatural solemnity.

"Do you intend to buy, madam?"

And from an ambulant gramaphone, whose red trumpet rose in the shadow like a coral cup, issued a strange, hoarse music, a metallic and rapid laughter, now near, now far, which streamed forth from an unknown and alarming profundity, expressing a false joy, a cry of misery, grief, derision, of wickedness and roguery, of pity and sadness—a voice at once mocking and imploring, empty and portentous, unconscious, and supremely melancholy.

To Regina it seemed the voice of the surrounding crowd. Yes! the voice of the pale young daughter of joy, with the auburn hair under the great black hat, seated alone and thoughtful before one of the tables at the Morteo; the voice of the child like the water bird of the famished singer, of the rough melon-seller, of the bright-eyed old man in the pink shirt, of the gentleman with the thick lips and brutal looks, of the melancholy fat man, of the lady in the red dress lifted to show a trim ankle, of the wet-nurse with the Jewish profile, of the yellow infant which she held in her arms, of the little woman in black with floating veil who ran after the tram, of the pair of lovers leaning romantically against the garden gate.

"And it's my voice too, and Antonio's!" thought Regina, and sometimes the crowd still disgusted her, but her disgust was tempered by compassion. Returning home, she still saw the melon-seller, the fat misanthrope, the nurse, and the girl with the red frock; but above all the thin singing woman, who was probably hungry, and the daughter of joy with the thoughtful, the pure face. She fancied that Antonio had glanced at the latter with a certain interest, and she thought: "Can they have known each other once?" But she felt no resentment, only great compassion for the lost girl, for Antonio, for herself, and for all the unconscious ones, the rich or the wretched, for all the sadness and the weariness of men, which gurgled forth from the blood-coloured cup of the ambulating gramaphone.

Sometimes Antonio and Regina sat on a bench at the bottom of the avenue in the shadow. He seemed overcome by depression and fatigue. She watched dreamily the great coloured eyes of the tram, the course of the newspaper carts, carrying to the station their load of glory and of gossip, the going and coming of the people, the shadows of the trees, the clouds which rose up from the silver depths of the horizon. White and tender the moon looked down from heaven. Music of mandolines and violins throbbed and vibrated, a neighbouring bell tolled, a distant trumpet sounded.

"They all make music!" observed Regina. "The whole world seems holiday-making and merry."

"On the contrary, according to you it's sad," said Antonio, not without irony.

"No; it's worse than sad! It's miserable, and I am very sorry for it!"

He made no reply. Since their re-union he did not controvert the melancholy speeches of his wife on those occasions, infrequent now, when she allowed herself to be depressed.

---

In September Regina perceived that the old miller's prophecy had come true. She was to be a mother.

The fact was not particularly agitating, certainly not displeasing, either to her or to her husband. It occasioned, however, a small dispute between them, for Antonio declared at once that the child must have a nurse, while Regina was for bringing it up herself.

"Too much worry," he said, almost roughly.

"Well, have we the means to pay for a nurse?"

"We have," he affirmed, shortly.

The year passed. Nothing extraordinary happened. During the winter Regina went out little and scarcely saw any one. She did not visit her mother-in-law, finding an excuse in the stairs. When Arduina came to look for her, she bade the maid say she was not at home. She was aware of her own ingratitude, since after all it was Arduina who had got Antonio his post with the Princess; but she could not overcome her antipathy to her husband's whole family.

Before the child's birth she fell into a sort of moral lethargy. In spite of the physical disturbances her prospects did not displease her; on the other hand, the idea of motherhood woke in her little enthusiasm. During the winter she devoured an immense number of novels, which her husband brought from the library. Hour after hour she sat over the fire, which Antonio had arranged in one of the drawing-rooms—quite alone and very quiet.

Antonio went out in the morning often while she was still asleep. He ran in for lunch, went out again, came back towards evening after an extra hour or two in the office, studying or dispatching business for the Princess. Regina had got used to solitude.

All was going on well; perhaps too well. In addition to his two salaries, Antonio said he had made a little by extra work in the Department. Then one evening towards the middle of April, when the birth of the baby was imminent, he told Regina a somewhat curious story.

"If you won't scold," he began, "I'll confess my sins to you."

"I needn't scold if you have upbraided yourself and repented."

"Repented? No; the serious thing is, I haven't repented! Look here. The day you ran away last year I got dragged by a friend of mine into a gambling-house——"

"Ah——!" cried Regina.

"Don't be frightened. It was the one only time. I was irritated, naturally; infuriated—almost desperate. But, you know (I never spoke of it, but I want to tell you now once and for all) I was far angrier with myself than with you. You were perfectly right. I had been imprudent, improvident. I hadn't properly forewarned you of all the little annoyances of middle-class life in a big town. We needn't go over it. It's enough that I was furious with myself for not having the sense to find some way out of my subordinate position. Well, I went with the fellow, and I played. You remember I had 100 lire? I put them all on the green table. I saw I was still a great baby, fancying I understood others and myself, while, on the contrary—why, I saw two or three of my colleagues there, and I even observed one of them cheating! Another had that day gone down from our Department into that of the Intendance, and the man who superseded him had paid him 2000 lire. He (my colleague) had three children and another coming. His wife hadn't been out for two months because she hadn't a decent frock. He had made the exchange because he wanted to get away from Rome, pay his debts, provide for his wife's confinement. That night he had his 2000 lire in his pocket, and, would you believe it, he lost them all! As for me, I began by winning. I got up to 1800 lire; then I lost till I was down to 50. I won and lost again. That's how it always is. Towards morning I had made about 2000 lire. I was worn out, sleepy, nauseated. I thought of you. I thought: 'If Regina only knew!' All at once a quarrel burst out between one of the players and my colleague, who had been cheating. They came to blows. The manager of the house intervened. There was pandemonium! I got up and came away with my fine 2000 lire."

Regina listened, seated by the window, against which Antonio was leaning. It was almost night. From the beautiful hushed street, where the lamps shone pale in the last rosiness of the long twilight, from the gardens of the opposite houses, from near, from far, came that warm and grateful perfume of the spring evenings in Rome. The new moon, pale green like a slice of unripe orange, was going down in a violet-pink sky, above the already darkened houses in the far part of the street. Regina remembered the night when she had leaned against the window of their first Apartment and complained that she could not see the stars. What changes within and around her! That night she had formulated to herself the plan of flight and separation. Now—now all that seemed a dream. Why does life change one in this way? And neither was Antonio what he had been that evening. He confessed it himself. He said, "I was a great baby and did not know it."

Now—now he was telling her a story, and Regina was listening, but with an inexplicable conviction that it was not true. Why should he say what was not true? She did not know, did not try to explain her incredulity. She just felt that the story Antonio was telling her was an invention. She was vaguely distressed. She would much rather have thought Antonio had really been gambling, had lost or won—it mattered little which—so long as he were not telling her lies.

He went on—

"Now hear the best of it. When I found myself with the 2000 lire I formed at least two thousand projects. I thought of going to you. I thought of gambling again. What I did was to hand the money over to Arduina and tell her to get me a post as secretary. Then came the days in which I was going to the Exchange about the Princess's matter, and presently I purchased five shares in the Carburo Italiano Company. They were at 300 lire just then. Do you know what they are worth now? Do you know, Regina?"

In spite of herself, Regina was excited. Antonio was bending over her, and though his voice was calm, almost indifferent, she felt in him some unaccustomed agitation.

She forgot the doubts which had assailed her. No; Antonio was no longer lying. The expression of his eyes, brilliant in the light of the window, was truly a sincere expression, on fire with audacity. His eyes, once so soft, so amorous, were now those of a man intent on making a fortune at all costs.

"Do you know?" he repeated.

"How should I know?"

"Guess."

"500 lire?" she hazarded.

"More."

"600?"

"More—more."

"1000?" she suggested, timidly.

"More still."

"Then we are rich!" she exclaimed, with forced irony, angry at her own excitement.

"We are not rich yet, but we can be. It's the first step, which is everything, my dear! Our five shares are each worth 1200 lire. They may go up even higher, but I intend to sell out to-morrow. Half the money I shall give to you; with the other half I'll make another venture. Fortune, it seems, is only a matter of will. But you mustn't be frightened!" he ended, for Regina had turned pale.

"Why did you never tell me about it?"

"What was the use? Suppose the shares had gone down?"

As on that former evening, which rose obstinately before Regina's memory, the maid interrupted by announcing dinner, and the young pair went into the next room. By the lamp-light Antonio again noticed Regina's pallor, but he jested.

"Don't fly away on the wings of Pegasus!"

They talked a little of the morality and the opportunities of speculation, of risks and lotteries.

"Nonsense!" said Antonio. "All life is a lottery. We must risk something or die. And now we'll go out for our walk."

---

Next day he sold the shares, after having shown them to Regina, and gave her 3000 lire. She put 2000 in the savings bank; with the rest she bought furniture, and provided for the birth and christening of her baby.

"Perhaps I shall die," she said, in the last days of waiting. "You'll see that now, just when we've got a little luck, I shall die."

"Don't talk nonsense," said Antonio, almost angry.

She did not die, but she gave to the light a miserable little being, its life hanging by a thread, a baby like a kitten, ill-formed, ill-coloured, with an enormous head.

When she first saw this little misery she wept with disappointment and repugnance.

"If it would only die!" she mourned, cruelly. "Why oh! why have I given it life!"

"Young lady," she was answered by the nurse, a peasant woman, like a statue, with a bronze face in an aureole formed by a turquoise head ornament, "leave the infant to me. You have brought her into the world, and now you have no more to do. Leave her to me, Signurì."

Regina appeared to have little confidence, so the big woman was offended. She sulked, she quarrelled with the servant, who insisted the baby was dying. Next day she fell out with Marianna, who had come to inquire for Regina, and made the remark that the child seemed a kitten.

"Just let her grow a bit," cried the indignant peasant, "and she'll be clawing at you! Little Miss Catharine may be like a kitten, but you're for all the world like a rat!"

---

By the middle of May Regina had recovered; she had regained her beauty and felt strong and happy. The nurse kept her promise; her rich country milk gave life and vigour to the poor little city infant. The distorted black little face cleared and acquired a profile; the immense heavy eyes began to be human. Sometimes the baby smiled, and her whole little face became animated. Then Regina felt certain her daughter was beautiful; but presently she laughed and thought she must be deluded—a victim of that mania which attacks all mothers.

However, she was happy, happy in her freedom, her health, her life. After the few first delicious walks on Antonio's arm she began to go with the nurse and the baby. The mornings were splendid; breaths of perfumed wind gave stimulating sweetness to the air; bands of shining silver furrowed the luminous heights of the heaven.

How different from the spring of a year ago! Now Regina felt impulses of tenderness for everything and everybody. The warm surging of that breeze which came from the summer of the southern plains and passed on to her northern home still stung by the sharpness of winter, ravished her soul, sending it forth in flight like a bird drunk with light and space.

One day she sallied forth quite alone. She felt like that hero of Dostoievsky's, who, unexpectedly obliged to cross the principal streets of the great city in which he had long lived without attention, seemed to himself born again to a new life. Roaming in the immensity of Via Nazionale, Regina looked about her with childish curiosity. For the first time she perceived that the Hotel Quirinale was a soft grey, while to her it had always seemed mustard colour; she saw the tower of the American Church striped and elegant like a lady's dress; she admired the fine perspective of Via Quattro Fontane; she stood on the sunlit carpet which covered regally the steps of the Exhibition. A red-faced cabman raised two fingers, thinking her a foreigner seeking a carriage; a Moor in European dress passed near her and stared; a flower-girl offered her roses. It was all interesting; but a year ago she would have been annoyed.

She descended Via dei Serpenti, and as she advanced saw the arches of the Colosseum open to the deep sky, and she fancied them huge blue eyes looking at her and full of eternal dream. She found herself alone before the great dead sphinx; only a boy—fair-haired, rosy, dressed in green—was watching the entrance from between two baskets of oranges. The broken columns lying in the sun showed metallic reflections; the voluptuous wind brought whiffs of country fragrance; cries of love-making birds came from the trees of the Palatine; the outline of the trees was soft against the feathery silver clouds which veiled the sky.

Regina descended, almost running. She penetrated under an archway and paused, checked by a sudden chill. A priest passed close to her, black and fluttering, like a melancholy bird. She moved on, opened her guide-book, but did not read. Play of sun and shade painted the background of the Colosseum's immense emptiness. The walls, dotted with wild plants and yellow flowers, suggested a mountain-side; shady corners, green with moss, seemed little damp pastures; mysterious caverns opened great black mouths. Hoarse cawing of rooks came from behind the huge blue eyes which the great sphinx fixed on its own ruin. From the hopeless profundity of heaven rained a dream of solitude and death.

"I have never cared for history," thought Regina. "There are persons who come miles to gush about a stone on which possibly some Roman warrior set his dirty foot! That seems silly to me. Why? A stone is for me only a stone! Nothing speaks to me by its past, but by its present significance. The past is death; the present is life. Here am I, and here once laboured twelve thousand slaves—or how many was it?" (Again she opened the guide-book, but did not read.) "Here the lions devoured the Christians, and cruel eyes of emperors, women, plebeians, with less conscience than the lions, enjoyed the horrid spectacle. But all that is past, and it doesn't move me a bit. Oh, dear! Here come the foreigners, bursting into this dream of death, chattering like ducks in a stagnant pond! Let me escape!"

She went away. The Palatine trees trembled in the breeze against a sky ever brighter and brighter. The campanile of Santa Francesca Romana was clear-cut, bright, and dark. The Arch of Constantine framed the bright picture of the roadway with its background of silvery cloud. Regina followed the road and seated herself on the highest step of the stair of San Gregorio. Everything she could see in front of her, from the pine-trees, noisy with birds, to the rosy vision of the city's edge, all was light, life, joy; behind her, in the damp cloister, green with moss, in the portico guarded by tombs, in the abandoned garden, all was silence, sadness, death. Always the great contrast! Vibrating with life, she nevertheless entered into that place of death and allowed herself to be taken round by a friar, who seemed a skeleton wrapped in a yellow tunic. They visited the chapels, in whose silence the beautiful figures of Domenichino and Guido grow pale, like persons condemned to solitude. Regina crossed the desolate garden and watched the friar, with profound pity, wondering he could still walk, though he was dead to life.

She thought of her baby, the little Caterina. Ah! she should be taught to appreciate, to enjoy, to adore life!

"How many dead people there are in the world!" she thought. "I myself was dead till a few months ago. Now I have revived a little, but I am not so much alive as my baby shall be! I am only a resuscitated person with the memory of the grave still in my soul."

As she went out she put a small coin in the friar's yellow palm, and, from the manner in which he thrust the money into his pocket and looked at the donor, she perceived that he had still some life in him, this little yellow skeleton of a friar!

Then she went out, hurrying from the sepulchre-guarded portico, thirsting for the sun, for noise, and for immensity.

PART III

CHAPTER I

On Christmas Eve (Old Style) Regina and Antonio went to the Princess's reception. They were accompanied by a little blonde lady, modestly attired in black. It was Gabrie, the Master's daughter, who had realised her dream of finishing her studies in Rome at the Scuola di Magistero. For two months, courageously and quietly, she had lived on study and privation in a garret of Via San Lorenzo, in the family of a strolling musician, who had once been an organist near her home. The Venutellis had offered her hospitality, but she had refused it, contenting herself with visiting at their house and allowing them occasionally to take her to the theatre. To-night, chiefly out of curiosity, she had condescended to go with them to Madame Makuline's. She wanted to see a rich lady close, that she might excite the envy of her puffed-up young friend at Sabbioneta.

Innocently, or sarcastically (Regina had not yet made out if Gabrie were innocent or malicious), she said—

"I've been sending her picture cards of the fox hunt, the meet, the motors, the smart people. That young woman has no ideas beyond all that." (She said that young woman in accents of profound contempt.)

"Nor have many others," muttered Antonio.

He was stepping a little in advance of the ladies, and seemed lost in thought, very erect and fashionable, however, in his dark, smooth overcoat.

"Do you mean that for me?" said Gabrie, after a pause. Then, without waiting for a reply, almost as if penitent, she added, "Dear me, Signor Antonio, aren't you crushed by that coat? The history professor has one like it, and the girls say whenever he goes out he has to come home and lie down—he's so worn out by it."

"Indeed!" said Antonio, absently.

They arrived at the Villa. The night was warm and still; the blue splendour of the moon eclipsed the lamps. The street was empty. Regina remembered the first night she had come to this house, and she sighed and smiled. She did not know why she sighed nor why she smiled, but she rapidly recalled how unhappy she had been then, while now she was so extremely happy, with a husband who loved her so much and worked for her so hard, with her pretty baby, her home, her heart-felt peace and assured prosperity; and yet——And yet? Oh, nothing! A mere cloud, the shadow of a cloud, passing over the depths of her soul!

The great doors opened. The servant did not smile, but his pale, impassive face lighted up amiably at sight of the new-comers.

"Are there many people?" asked Antonio, as the servant took Regina's cloak.

"A few," replied the big youth, in a bass voice.

Regina looked at Gabrie, who, after a rapid glance at the wolves in the porch, was covertly scrutinising the servant. He carried the wraps into an adjacent room, and Antonio familiarly opened the door to the right.

"Wait one moment," said Regina, who was smoothing her hair. It was beautifully arranged. She was rosy, and a little plumper than she had been a year or two ago. Her light dress with its neck garniture of foamy white was becoming. She looked young and almost a beauty. Indeed, she thought so herself, and entered the Princess's drawing-room quite satisfied.

"How's the little one?" asked Madame.

"Quite well, thank you. May I introduce my friend?"

Gabrie bowed to the hostess, who scarcely noticed her. Then she sat down in the corner of a sofa and stayed there the whole evening, shy, quiet and silent.

The usual old ladies and old gentlemen filled the rooms, which, as usual, were overheated.

The only person at all young was a lady dressed childishly in blue, with big blue eyes and long, downcast golden lashes. She sat near the hostess, in a circle of two old ladies and three old men, amongst whom was he of the pink-china bald head.

Madame was silent, listening to a German traveller who was giving an account of his recent tour in India. Fatter than ever, paler, more dowdy in her clumsy black velvet gown, the Princess looked like one of the many old women of remoter ages whose ugliness has been immortalised by the painters of their day. Her eyes alone seemed alive in her swollen, corpse-like face.

The lady in blue asked the German if he had read Loti's article on India (without the English) in the Revue des Deux Mondes.

"Oh, he exaggerates, as usual. To read Loti, you'd suppose the burial in the Ganges a poem. On the contrary, it's a great——"

"——a great saleté," said Marianna, sitting near Gabrie, and whispering so as not to be overheard by Madame, who often reproved her for her coarse language.

Gabrie, who had understood from her Sabbioneta friend that great ladies never said ugly words, stared at Marianna, then dropped her eyes and remained quiet in her corner.

"Whatever Loti says is false," continued the German. "I once heard Madame Ciansahma, a Japanese authoress, say that when she wanted a laugh she read a book of Loti's."

"And don't we laugh when Madame Ciansahma takes us off, and tries to look like an European?" asked the lady in blue.

"How can she know what Madame Ciansahma looks like?" whispered Marianna, leaning forward.

Regina also leaned forward and indicated the blue lady.

"She's blind, isn't she?"

"Stone blind. For that matter," added Marianna, "the blind sometimes see more than those with eyes."

Gabrie, mute and stiff, wedged in between the two young ladies, looked and listened. Every one was talking except herself—her small, colourless self in her little black frock. The blind lady, moving and talking as if she could see perfectly, became the special object of her attention.

The Princess was talking. Antonio also, very handsome but preternaturally grave, was talking to an elderly young lady who had stuck a golden fringe on top of her scanty red hair. Scraps of phrases, laughter, isolated words in the midst of the general hubbub, reached the corner where sat Regina, Gabrie and Marianna.

"Do you know that lady's history?" asked Marianna. "Blind as she is, she tried to murder her husband, who was the cause of her calamity."

"How was that?"

"I'll tell you afterwards. Now I must talk to those people over there."

She moved off with a great rustling of her petticoats. But suddenly she stopped and said, looking back to Regina—

"I met your baby out with that demon of a nurse. I put the woman in a fury telling her we were going to have an earthquake."

"I know," said Regina laughing; "you frightened her to death."

"Frightened her? Won't that poison the baby? But it's quite true about the earthquake. I read it in print."

"Really? What fun!" said Gabrie.

Marianna seemed to see her for the first time.

"Is this a relation of yours?" she asked Regina.

"More or less," said Regina.

"I observe a likeness. But bless me! I'm forgetting my duties."

She started again, but again turned back.

"Oh! I've been wanting to tell you something, Signora. Come with me. How grand you are to-night! It must be because——"

"What do you want to tell me?"

"Come with me," said Marianna, taking her hand.

"Gabrie, you come too," said Regina.

Gabrie rose, but, bethinking her that Marianna probably wished to speak to her friend alone, she begged to be allowed to remain where she was.

"You won't be lonely?"

"No, no. I like this corner. Go."

Regina went, but soon came back and took Gabrie to the supper-room. The table was laden with plate, and the company stood round it eating and drinking. Marianna, seated at the Samovar, was pouring tea into Japanese cups, delicate and transparent as flowers. Antonio was carrying them to the guests. He gave one to Gabrie, who smiled at him quietly.

"Are you enjoying yourself?" asked Antonio.

"Yes, very much. Only I can't understand all they say. Even Regina talks French. She speaks very well."

Antonio looked at his wife, so fair, delicate, graceful. She drew nearer and said—

"What are you staring at me for?"

"Am I not allowed to look at my wife? Why are you pale? You were quite rosy when we came. What's the matter?"

"The matter? Nothing. Am I pale, Gabrie?"

"A little. But it's very becoming," said Gabrie, tasting the tea.

"Thank you, dear!"

"You're much the prettiest here. Isn't she, Signor Antonio?"

"The prettiest and the best dressed."

"You're overwhelming me, you two," said Regina; "you're a pair of flatterers, that's what you are!"

"She's grown fatter, hasn't she," said Antonio to Gabrie. "Do you remember how thin she was? By Jove, she was a fright!"

"Thank you, my dear!" said Regina.

"No, she wasn't a fright. She was thin, certainly. But when she came home last year she was thin then. And quite green, she was! And always in a bad humour! She was afraid you had run away from her, Signor Antonio, and was always watching for the postman——"

"Who told you that?" asked Regina, astonished.

"I saw it. But the moment Signor Antonio arrived——"

"Upon my word, if you fail as a novelist it won't be for want of observation, my dear!"

They were standing all together at a short distance from their hostess. The latter suddenly turned and came towards them. In her small be-gemmed hands she held a plate and a silver fork. She was eating slowly, munching at a slice of tart, and she had smeared her mouth with chocolate. Never had she looked more hideous.

"Is your friend from Viadana?" she asked Antonio, pointing to Gabrie with her fork.

"From the country—from my home!" cried Regina, looking affectionately at the girl.

It seemed to her that Gabrie's little face wore a look of ineffable disgust.

---

The days and the months rolled on.

A morning came when Regina woke to see a thread of gold coming through the closed shutters and falling on the blue wall across the corner of her room. It was the sun beating on the window. Spring had come, and Regina felt a profound gladness. Time had run on, and she had not noticed it, so happy she thought herself. Sometimes she felt quite afraid of her happiness, and even this morning, after her quick joy at sight of the sunshine, she looked at the sleeping Antonio and thought—

"Suppose he were to die! Any one of us, I, or he, or baby, might die at any moment! This great light which shines in my soul might be put out in one instant."

She raised herself on her elbow and surveyed her husband. His fine head, motionless on the pillow, illuminated by the gold ray from the window, had the severe beauty of a statue. Blue veins showed on his closed eyelids. His whole aspect was of suavity and gentleness.

Last night he had come home late, later than usual, even though most nights he was late. Regina was not jealous. He worked hard all day. Every hour was absorbed by feverish activity. Only in the evening could he amuse himself, walk, do what he liked. His wife knew this and asked for no account of these hours. Besides, did he not always tell her where he had been? There were days in which husband and wife hardly saw each other, except in the morning when they first woke; and sometimes, if he woke late, Antonio had to jump out of bed, dress in a hurry, bolt his breakfast, and run to the office.

For all that, perhaps because of that, their life went on smooth and tranquil as a limpid and quiet stream. Nurse (always relating how she had lived with a pair who used to beat each other even in bed—"and when I wanted to make peace between them I took a stick too!") used to say—

"We can't go on like this, Mistress! Do quarrel with Master a little, or you'll see we shall get some bad luck."

"I defy the prophecy!" said Regina.

"Well, I hope I'll get through bringing up the little angel first! See what a beauty she is! See!"

---

Antonio woke, and before opening his eyes felt that Regina was looking at him, and he smiled.

"It must be very late!" he exclaimed, seeing the ray of sunshine.

"No; it's the sun which is earlier. It's a quarter to eight. Shall I ring for baby?"

"Wait one minute! Give me a kiss! We hardly ever see each other!"

He took her in his arms and kissed her, hugging her like a child. She kissed his smooth brow, his hair, and, feeling him all her own, so loving, so young, so handsome, so trusting, her heart throbbed with a tenderness that was almost pain. Thus for several minutes they remained embraced, in the silence, in the luminous penumbra of the warm, blue room.

Outside the street was becoming animated; but the noises vibrated softly, as if blended in the deep serenity of the air.

"I feel as if we were lying in a wood," said Antonio. "I'm still half asleep, and I'd like to sleep on like this to the end of time."

"It's the spring!" said Regina. "I also see the wood, and through the wood the river, and, oh, so many flowers!"

"Are you going to the Pincio to-day?"

"No; I'm going to see Gabrie. She has been three days in bed, poor child."

Antonio made no remark. He did not require his wife to account for her time, just as she did not demand it of him.

Regina wanted to go and see her mother in June, and he asked, suddenly, "When is the exam.?"

"What exam.? Gabrie's? July, I think."

"Then you aren't going back together, as she said the other day?"

"No."

They were silent. So much time had passed, so many things had changed—Regina had left home twice, and twice she had come back—that the caprice of her first going away now seemed a mere childishness, far off, obscured by subsequent events. Still, every time they spoke of parting, even if, as to-day, it were at one of the sweetest and most intimate moments of their life, they felt embarrassed, separated, torn asunder by some extraneous force. But this did not last. To-day spring was beating at the window. It was the time not of clouds, but of sun. Young, at ease, in love with each other, Regina and Antonio forgot the winter with the birds, and with them sung their hymn of joy.

He called her his little queen, and squandered on her a thousand extravagant pet names. She admired him—meaning it, too—and told him he was the most beautiful husband in the whole world. From the wall the sun's eye watched them, pleased and peaceful.

---

Regina went with the nurse and baby to the station gardens, then set off to visit Gabrie. She was taking her a book, a bunch of violets, and a packet of biscuits; and she walked along lightly and briskly, imagining herself engaged in a work of charity. She glanced at the station clock and saw it was ten. Not a leaf fluttered, and the motionless air was perfumed by narcissus and young grass. In the distance the mountains were the colour of flax-blossom, and scarce visible, as if seen through the transparence of water. A bird-seller stepped just in front of Regina, and so intense, so insistent was the joy of spring, that even the little half-fledged sparrows, the redbreasts stained with blood, the canaries yellow as daffodils, twittered with delight in the two swinging cages carried by the melancholy man. Regina thought of buying a baby sparrow for Caterina; but what would Caterina make of it? She would choke it without even amusement. No; Regina would not accustom her little one to senseless pleasures and cruel caprices.

"But," she reflected, "if I buy the bird I shall give one moment of pleasure to this sorrowful seller, who probably hasn't taken a penny to-day. Yet why should I suppose the man sorrowful? He may be quite happy. We are always imagining the griefs of others, and probably they don't exist. Once I thought everybody was unhappy; now—now—I see I was wrong."

---

Spring penetrated even into the big house where Gabrie lived. Regina had always seen the stairs damp, greasy and muddy; but to-day they were quite dry, the landings washed; an open door revealed a passage with polished floor. From the first storey, which represented the luxury of a book-keeper, to the fourth, inhabited by the ex-organist, the inhabitants had cleaned up the house to receive the Easter warmth—enemy of that great enemy of the poor, winter. Regina had an undefined feeling of pensive pleasure as she heard her green silk petticoat rustling up the silence of the stairs. She was not consciously thinking of her silk petticoat, nor of the comfort of her life, the short, well-lighted stair of her own dwelling, her two drawing-rooms, her Savings-bank book, her subscription to the Costanzi; but the certainty of all these possessions illumined her heart, and made her a little sentimental. She felt herself a person of consequence, sun-warmed like Easter, violets in her hand, bringing the breath of spring up that stair of poverty, of workers, students, failures. She would have liked to leave a violet on the threshold of every Apartment. She remembered an anæmic young student whom she had once seen coming out of N. 8, his lips blue, his eyes pale as faded hyacinths, buttoned up in a threadbare though clean overcoat; and she wished she might meet him to-day to greet him and make him understand that she loved the poor, whom once she had despised.

But the young man did not come out, and she climbed on till she had reached a door where a card, fixed with four wafers, informed the visitor that this Apartment had the good fortune to shelter.

Mario Ennio Colorni,
Ex-Organist and
Professor of the Violin.

It was not impressive to Regina, as she had seen it already. She had visited Gabrie several times. In the first instance the Master had written praying her to "scrutinise whether the environment were dangerous or doubtful, as all the houses in the San Lorenzo quarter were reputed to be."

Signora Colorni opened the door, a little woman with a black cap and blue spectacles. She did not immediately recognise the visitor, and hesitated childishly about allowing her to enter. Regina made her smell the violets, and said, in the Mantuan dialect—

"Don't you know me? How is Gabrie?"

The little woman, whom typhus fever had left bald, dumb, and nearly blind, smiled gently. Her little face was the face of a child who has put on Grandmother's cap and spectacles for fun. Regina walked on into the Apartment, crossed the passage, which was very clean and in which was a great smell of cooking, went into the little parlour, the half-shut window of which was veiled by a curtain of yellowish muslin. Through the open door she saw that Gabrie's room, in process of arranging by Signora Colorni, was empty.

She turned. The dumb woman smiled, and waved her hand to the window.

"What? Out? But she wrote to me she was ill in bed!"

The little woman shook her head, coughed, and touched her forehead to signify that Gabrie had certainly been ill. Then she smiled again, pointed to the window, took a chair, for they had come into the little room, and placed it before Regina.

"Will she soon be back? Where is she gone?"

The woman took an envelope from Gabrie's table and held it to the wall.

"Gone to post a letter, is that it? Well, I'll wait a few minutes, as I am tired. And how's Signor Ennio?"

Again the woman smiled, made the gesture of violin-playing, then opened her arms very wide, perhaps to intimate that he had gone a long way, and that his instrument was speaking tenderly and humbly to some German bride and bridegroom in that hour of sun, in the poetry of some suburban inn, lively with chickens and pink with peach-blossom.

Regina sat down, and the little woman went away.

For some minutes profound silence reigned in the clean little Apartment, full of peace and the odour of baked meats. Gabrie's tiny room, with its pink-flowered yellow paper, its narrow white bed, its little table littered with books and copy-books, its window open on a sky of pearl-strewn azure, gave Regina the idea of a nest on the top of a poplar-tree. Yes! life was lovely even for the poor! Everything was relative. This strolling fiddler, who at night brought two, three, sometimes even five lire home to his little hard-working, dumb wife, and found his little home clean, a good piece of abbacchio (kid) in the oven, and a soft bed waiting for him, was happier than many a millionaire. And Gabrie, with her pluck and her dreams, who saw her life before her long but luminous, like that depth of sky behind her window—who could say how happy she must be! "Happiness is not in our surroundings, but in ourselves," thought Regina. "I declare I once thought myself wretched because I lived on a fifth floor in a house which was in quite a good quarter. Now I believe I could be happy even here—in this house of poor people, in the outskirts of the kingdom of the most miserable!"

Still Gabrie did not come in. So much the better, if it meant she was cured. Regina looked at her tiny clock; it was half-past ten. She could wait a little longer. She got up and walked to the window. On the right, on the left, overhead, that dazzling sky; down below the railway, the tall houses tanned by the sun; bits of green, the vague breathing of life and of spring, the immense palpitation of a distant steam engine. All, all was beautiful.

Still no Gabrie. Regina left the window and approached the table to set down the violets which she still held in her hand. Her silk petticoat made a great rustling in the silence of the tiny room.

Yes; everything was beautiful; not least that little table covered with foolscap and note-books which represented the dream, the essence, the finger-marks of a soul clear and deep as a mirror. Regina took up an open note-book.

She remembered the time when she, too, had thought of becoming an authoress. She had never succeeded in writing the first line of her first chapter. How far would Gabrie get? Further, it was to be hoped, than Arduina! Regina's thoughts wandered to her husband's relations. They had disappeared, or at least faded from her life, like personages in the opening chapters of a novel who find no opportunity of coming in again. Regina often sent nurse and baby to visit the grand-mother, and she listened to Antonio when he talked of his family. Herself, however, she hardly ever saw any of them, and though now she regarded them as neither more nor less agreeable than a thousand others, she could not resist a feeling of resentment whenever she found herself in their society.

But why should she think of them now when she was turning the leaves of Gabrie's note-book? She sought the sequence of ideas. This was it. Confusedly she was thinking that if Antonio, instead of taking her to his relations in that odious Apartment, choked up with lumber and horrible figures like an ugly and ill-painted picture, had brought her to a little, silent, sunny home as humble as even this of the ex-organist, she would not have suffered so acutely during her honeymoon.

She put down that note-book and picked up another. Her thoughts now changed their shape like clouds urged by the wind.

"No; I should probably have suffered more. I had to suffer, to pass through a crisis. I suppose all wives of any intelligence have to go through it. And now, now it's easy for me to think everything beautiful, because I am happy, because my life has become easy. Ah! What's this?

"A young lady of seventeen, of noble though fallen family, anæmic, insincere, vain, envious, ambitious; knows how to conceal her faults under a cold sweetness which seems natural. She is always talking of the upper aristocracy. Some one told her she was like a Virgin of Botticelli's, and ever since she has assumed an air of ecstasy and sentiment. This does not prevent her from being ignobly enamoured of a sign-painter."

Regina recalled the enthusiasm with which the Master had read part of this extract to Signora Caterina. She saw again the big Louis XV room, flooded with the burning twilight, the clouds travelling like violet-grey birds over the greenish sky, over the greenish river.

"See what a spirit of observation! It's a character for a future story, Signora Caterina. My Gabrie picks up, picks up. She sees a character, observes it, sets it down. She is like a good housewife who keeps everything in case it may come in useful——"

The Master talked, and Regina pitied him. The Master read, and Regina recognised in the figure drawn with photographic minuteness the young lady from Sabbioneta.

Gabrie's note-book was almost filled with these little figures. Regina turned the leaves without scruple, and in the later pages she found characters of professors, students, that of Claretta (a flirt, hysterical, corrupt), whom Gabrie had met in Regina's drawing-room a few days before.

She was terrible, this future novelist; not a looking-glass, but a Röntgen apparatus!

Regina, impelled by curiosity, continued to turn the leaves and to read, standing by the little table.

"A young wife, short-sighted, dark, all eyes and mouth, clever, rather original, a little enigmatical. Of noble but fallen family; imagines she doesn't value her blue blood, and, perhaps, does not think about it; but her blood is blue, and she feels it, and would like to be aristocratic. She is fond of luxury and of rich people. She is married to a poor man, but has succeeded in making him largely increase his income."

"Good gracious! This is myself!" thought Regina, amused but slightly offended. "She doesn't treat me very kindly, this girl! What does she mean by that last phrase?"

Suddenly she remembered that Gabrie had once told her certain stories she has got from her fellow-students.

"But it's a fire of calumny, that college of yours!" Regina had protested, and Gabrie had answered—

"A fire? It's a furnace!"

She read on—

"An authoress: tall, thin, yellow, with little, milky eyes, small mouth, black teeth, yellow hair, hooked nose. Moves pity by the mere sight of her. When she's with men she also tries to flirt."

"That's Arduina, slain in three lines," thought Regina.

Then she found Massimo, Marianna—("short, with malicious olive face, little black eyes, pretends always to speak the truth, but a sculptor would entitle her, 'Statuette in bronze representing Malignant Folly'"), the blind lady, other persons who frequented the Princess's receptions, to which Regina had taken Gabrie several times. At last—

"A foreigner: very rich, tall, and stout; very black hair (dyed), lips too thick, pale, almost livid. Eyes small and sharp; mysterious as those of a wicked cat. Never laughs. Impossible to guess her age. Deaf. Always talking of an uncle who knew Georges Sand. Type of the sensual woman. Has a young lover——"

And immediately after—

"Government clerk: private secretary to an old Princess. Young. Fair. Very handsome. Tall, athletic; long, fascinating eyes; good mouth; fresh complexion. Lively. Good-hearted. Deeply in love with his young wife. Nevertheless, he is the Princess's lover."

CHAPTER II

Regina had once dreamed of an eclipse of the sun. Reading Gabrie's page, she remembered that dream, because there was reproduced in her the same feeling of fearful darkness, of portentous silence and terrible expectation.

For a moment. When the moment had passed she again saw the light of the sun, felt again the vibration of life, perceived that everything in the outer world had retained its proper aspect and position, and that nothing was changed. But she was no longer the same. Around her, far and near, the light had returned; within her darkness remained.

She laid the note-book on the table, took up the violets, the biscuits, the book, and she went. Later she saw she had fled from the vulgar temptation to question Gabrie, to force her, even by violence, to tell how she had guessed, whom she had heard speak of the hideous secret. As always, she was sustained by pride, stiff and cold as the iron which sustains the clay of the statue.

The dumb woman ran after the visitor as she departed, and made signs which Regina did not understand. That little figure, like a disguised child, woke in her a kind of ferocious repulsion. Why did such beings exist? Why did not nature or society suppress all maimed, useless, weak persons?

For the rest of her life Regina remembered that quiet little Apartment of the strolling musician, the uneven stair, the equivocal landings, the dusty hall of the big house in Via San Lorenzo; but it was with profound disgust, as if she had there come in contact with all the most foul and miserable things of life. She never returned to it.

Again she traversed the sunny street, the Piazza, the avenues, without noticing any one or anything, though she forced herself to remain calm and not to believe that nonsense which she had read. She would speak of it to Antonio. They would laugh at it together!

However, she was aware that agitation was gaining upon her, and, instead of going back to the garden where nurse and baby were waiting, she sat down on the first bench of the avenue on the right, opposite the Terme.

Why did she not go back to the garden? Why not call the nurse, that they might return home together? She could not.

Suddenly she seemed to hear a distant rumble like that of the immense palpitation of a train passing on some remote and invisible path.

"My God, what is it?"

A lady, with a great roll of red hair twisted at the nape of her neck, passed, looking at her curiously and turning her head as she went by. Regina drew a hand over her face, and understood that she was pale and visibly upset. The distant rumble, the breathless palpitation, came from her interior world, from her own agitated heart.

Then she shook herself all over like a bird just awakened, and tried to return to reality. The violets, the packet and the book were still on her lap. Why had she brought these away? Well, yes; by an instinctive vendetta against Gabrie, who had thrust this thorn into her heart.

"How small I am!" she thought. "What fault is it of hers if that is true? But can it be true? And why? And why did I not ask that at once, that Why?"

Ah! because it was useless to ask!

She knew the answer to this terrible Why. Even before the useless question had shaped itself on her lips the reason Why had sounded in her blood from vein to vein, out of the echoing abysses of her heart.

He had sold himself. Regina did not doubt it for a single instant, nor did the absurd thought pass for a single instant through her mind, that before his marriage he could have been the disinterested lover of that rich old woman.

He had sold himself. He had sold himself for her, for Regina, precisely as women sell themselves, to get money, to get a fine house, light and air, bits of silk, gewgaws, gloves, silk petticoats—all the things she had asked, all the things for lack of which she had reproached him.

"Oh, wretched, stupid boy! to be so weak, so vile. I will come home, I will take you and punish you as one punishes a wicked child! You ought to have understood me—you ought to have understood me!"

But while in her heart she sobbed out these and other recriminations, she felt them vain. Words of a very different truth were resounding in her soul, turning it into a threatening whirlwind.

It was she who had been weak and vile; she who had not understood the seriousness and fatality of life; and now life was punishing her like the wicked child which she had been.

Her head burned and throbbed as if she had literally been beaten. How long had she been sitting on this bench? People passed and stared at her. Young men turned their heads. One of them smiled after a glance of admiration at her green shoes and the edge of her green silk petticoat showing under the flounces of her dress.

She remembered that nurse was waiting in the gardens, but she could not move. Through the veil of her anguish she saw the people passing, the trees, the ruins in their spring clothing of weeds. There was a yellow awning among the ruins, and two doves with grey plumage were kissing in the ivy. The telegraph wires engraved the vivid azure of the heavens. She saw the advertisements on a corner of the Terme, a hunting scene, notice of a sale. She read senseless words, "Odol! Odol! Odol!" which afterwards remained strangely impressed on her memory. Builders were at work in the Piazza, and never afterwards could she forget the earthy red colour of their shirts. She followed with her gaze the scintillations of the wheels of the vehicles.

The simple scene, familiar after having been seen a hundred times, woke in her a profound disquiet, attracted, absorbed her. Then she suddenly realised that she herself was creating this curious interest in it, as an excuse for not moving from the bench, not going back to the gardens, delaying the hour for returning home.

She feared the return home to the house, the thought of which roused in her a sense of horror. All in it was lurid! All! all! all!

She would have liked to strip herself, to strip her baby—to tear from the little soft body, pure as a rosebud, the robes of shame, of prostitution, and take her thus naked on her naked breast, and fly with her, fly, fly——!

Fly! The old idea came back; but this time Regina would have wished to fly to some spot far distant from her native province, away beyond the river which never, never, would she cross again!

CHAPTER III

For more than half-an-hour Regina remained sitting on the bench. People passed, hurrying homewards. The children had come away from the gardens; even Caterina and her nurse must have left. The scent of grass became oppressive; a hot and enervating breath passed through the air. Like plaintive music, that odour of grass, that voluptuous warmth which undulated in the perfumed air, sharpened Regina's memories and emotions. Thoughts, stinging and ungovernable, rolled in waves through her perturbed mind. Only one recollection was insistent; it disappeared and returned, more definite than the others, burning, portentous. It, and it alone, was a revelation, for the other memories, however she might call them up, try to fix and interrogate them, did not suggest to her that which she desired and feared to know.

How, she asked herself, could Gabrie have penetrated to the secret? The intuition of an observant mind was not enough, nor the keen vision of two sane and cruel eyes. What manifest sign had appeared to Gabrie? Where had she found out the secret? On Madame's impassive face? Antonio's? Marianna's? Or was it a thing already public? Yet Regina had never even suspected it, nor did she remember the smallest revealing sign. True, a few words, a few phrases, now returned to her memory, taking a significance, which, even in her agitation, she thought must be exaggerated. "Anything is possible," Marianna had once said to her with her bad smile. "The blind see more than those with eyes." Who had said that? She did not remember, but she had certainly heard it in the Princess's drawing-room. Even the blind—could they, did they see? Who could tell? She had not seen, perhaps because, in her foolish confidence, she had never looked. Now she remembered the almost physical disgust which Madame Makuline had caused her the very first time they had met. She remembered Arduina's untidy, depressing little drawing-room, the wet sky, the melancholy night; the little old woman dressed in black, sheltering under a doorway, with her meagre basket of unripe lemons. In the shadow, dense as the blackness of pitch, Antonio's face had become suddenly sad, overcast, mysterious. The Princess's pallid, expressionless face, with its thick, colourless lips, appeared in that depth of shade like a dismal moon floating among the clouds of dream. Who could guess how long the evil woman, the outworn body of a dead star, had been attracting into her fatal orbit, her turbid atmosphere, the winged bird, instinct with life and love, which was unconsciously fluttering round her?

Unconsciously? No. Antonio had become sombre that evening when he saw the woman. As yet she disgusted him. But an abominable day had come later. His wife had left him, reproaching him for his poverty; and he, blind, humiliated, and defeated, had sold himself!

And the most insistent of Regina's recollections, the one which came as a revelation of the accomplished fact, was just that arrival of Antonio at Casalmaggiore, that drive along the river-bank, that strange impression she had received at sight of her husband. Now all was clear. This was why he was changed; this was why his kisses had seemed despairing, almost cruel. He had returned to her contaminated, shuddering with anguish. He had kissed her like that for love and for revenge, that he might make her share in the infamy to which she had driven him, that he might forget that infamy, that he might purify himself in her purity, and gain his own forgiveness.

Afterwards—well, afterwards he had got used to it. One gets used to everything. She herself had got used——Would she get used to this?

A whip would have stung her less than this idea. She leaped to her feet, hurried down the Viale, and entered the garden. It was deserted; already somnolent, scarcely shadowed by the delicate veil of the renascent trees. The nurse had gone.

Automatically Regina went out by the other gate, and paused under the ilices, all sprinkled with the pale gold of their new leaves. It was nearly noon. Was she to go back home? Was not this the just moment, the just occasion for serious flight? She would not re-enter the contaminated house! She would call Antonio to another place and say to him: "Since the fault belongs to us both, let us pardon each other; but in any case let us begin our life over again." Folly! Stuff of romance! In real life such things cannot happen, or do not happen at the just moment. Regina had once childishly run away, leaving her nest merely because it was narrow. Her flight had been a ridiculous caprice, and for that reason she had succeeded in carrying it out. Now, on the other hand, now that her dignity and her honour bade her remove her foot from the house which was soiled by the basest shame, now it was impossible for her to repeat that action!

---

She hastens her step; her silk flounces rustle. She feels a slight irritation in hearing that sighing of silk which surrounds and follows her. Her thoughts, however, are clearing themselves. As she descends Via Viminale, she seems returning to perfect calm. She must wait, observe, investigate. The world is malicious. People live on calumny, or at least on evil speaking. A man is not to be condemned because a silly school-girl has written down in her note-book a prurient malignity.

It is abject nonsense!

And yet——

The biggest tree has grown from a tiny seed——

Though she seems to have recovered her calm, Regina now and then stops as if overcome by physical pain. She cannot go on; something is pulling her back. But presently the fascination, the attraction of home draws her on, forces her to hasten. She walks on and on almost instinctively, like the horse who feels the place where rest and fodder are awaiting him.

At the corner where Via Viminale is crossed by Via Principe Amedeo, she stops as usual to look at the hats in the milliner's window. She wants a mid-season hat. There is the very one! Of silvery-green straw, trimmed with delicate pale thistles—a perfect poem of spring! But a dark shadow falls over her eyes the moment she perceives she has stopped. For hats, for silk petticoats, for all such miserable things, splendid and putrescent like the slough of a serpent, for these things he——

But the thought interrupts itself. No! no! Not a word of it is true! One should have proof before uttering such calumnies! Walk on Regina! Hurry! It is noon. He must have come back. Luncheon is ready!

And if none of it is true? Will he not notice her agitation? Can she possibly hide it? And if none of it is true? He will suffer. Again she will make him suffer for no reason. Here she is, pitying him! Guilty or not, he is worthy of pity. Instinctively she pities him, because the guilt has come home to herself.

Via Torino, Via Balbo, crooked, deserted, flecked with shadows from the trees in a little bird-haunted garden; a picture of distant houses against the blue, blue background; a rosy-grey cloud, fragment of mother-o'-pearl, sailing across the height of heaven—how sweet is all that! Regina descends the street swiftly, goes swiftly up the stair, her heart beats, her skirts rustle; but she no longer cares. Antonio has not come in. Baby is asleep. Regina goes to her bedroom, all blue, large and fresh in the penumbra of the closed shutters. She is hot, and as she undresses her heart beats strongly, but no longer with grief. At last she has awaked from a bad dream! or she has been suffering some acute bodily pain, which is now over.

There is Antonio's step upon the stair! She hears it as usual with joy. Now the familiar sound of his latch-key! Now the occult breath of life and joy which animates the whole house when he enters it!

"You've come in? What a lovely day! And Caterina?"

"She's asleep."

He takes off his hat and light overcoat, and flings them on the bed. Regina lifts her skirts from the floor, and is hanging them up, when she feels Antonio pass quite close and touch her with that breath of life, of youth and beauty, which he always sheds around him.

"Good God! I have had a hideous dream!" she thinks, bathing her burning face before joining him at the repast.

---

Antonio went out the moment he had finished lunch. He said he had an appointment at the Exchange. And the moment he had gone Regina went to the window, goaded by an obscure doubt, by a blind and unreasoning instinct. She saw her husband walking with his active step towards Via Depretis. Then she started back sharply, struck not by the absurdity of her doubt, but by the doubt itself.

No; at this hour he would not be going to that other. Besides, if he were he would have said so.

But now doubt was running riot in Regina's blood, and she felt her soul crushed by a dark oppression, a thousand times more painful, because more intelligent, than the oppression which she had felt up to an hour ago.

She repented that she had not detained Antonio and told him all.

"But what would have been the good?" she reflected at once. "He would lie. Of course, he wouldn't admit it to me! Oh, God! what must I do? What must I do?"

She sat down on the little arm-chair at the foot of her bed, and tried to think, to calculate coldly.

The cause of her doubt was certainly puerile—the guess of a heartless child. But truth sometimes finds amusement in revealing herself just in that way—by means of a heartless jest. The occult law which guides human destiny has strange and incomprehensible ordinances. At that moment Regina felt no wish to philosophise, but in her own despite she turned over certain questions. Why was all this happening which was happening? Why had she one day rebelled against her good destiny and let herself be carried away by a caprice? And why had this caprice, this feminine lightness, into which she had drifted almost unconsciously, brought about a tragedy? "Because we must have suffering," she answered herself. "Because sorrow is the normal state of man. But I am not resigned to suffering. I wish to rebel. Above all, I wish to overcome this suspicion which is poisoning me. I wish to know the truth. And when I know it—what shall I do?"

She reasoned, and was conscious of reasoning. This comforted her somewhat, or at least made her hope she would not commit further follies. But at moments she asked herself, was not the very suspicion itself a folly?

"We were, we are, so happy! But I'm always obliged to torment myself. I imagine I am reasoning, while to have the doubt at all is imbecility!"

But was she not saying this to convince herself there was no truth in it all, while she felt, she felt, that it was entirely true? She was afraid of losing her happiness, that's what it was! She wanted to keep her happiness at all costs, even at the cost of a vile selling of her conscience.

Ah! this thought robbed her of her reason! In that case she would be like the most abject of all the women who had ever been in her circumstances! She reasoned no further.

A nervous tremor shook her. Her arm contracted, forcing her to shut her fists.

"Anything! Anything! Misery, grief, scandal! Anything, even the abandonment of Antonio—but not infamy!"

She flung her arms over the bed, hid her face, bit, gnawed the coverlet, and wept.

She wept and she remembered. Once before she had flung herself on her bed and had wept with rage and grief. But Antonio had come, and she had kissed him with treason in her heart. It was she who had made infamous this weak and loving man, the conquest, the prey, of her superior force.

He had degraded himself for her, and now she was lowering him still more, suspecting that he would hesitate a single moment if she were to say to him, "I don't want all this you are giving me! Let us rise up out of the mud; let us re-make our life."

"If he lies, it will be for me, because he will not wish to destroy me. Oh! he is a rotten fruit! But I—I am the worm which is consuming him!"

But if, after all, she were deceiving herself? If it were not true? At moments this ray of joy flashed across her mind; then all the former darkness returned.

To know! to know! that was the first thing! Why cause him useless distress? The first thing was to make certain, and then——she would see!

The tears did her good. They were like a summer shower, clearing and refreshing her mind. She got up, washed her eyes, sat down to read the newspaper. She had to do something. But the first words which struck her and claimed her attention were these—

"Arrest of a foreign priest."

She read no further, for the words reminded her of something distant and oppressive, a matter now forgotten, which yet in some way belonged to the drama evolving in her mind.

What was it? When? How?

Here it was. The dream she had had, that night in her old home, after her running away.

Shutting her eyes, she again saw Marianna's little figure running at her side along the foggy river-bank, while she told how Antonio had borrowed money from Madame "to set up a fine Apartment."

Profound anguish, rage and shame goaded Regina, forced her to sob, to run, to try and escape somehow from Marianna; but Marianna still ran along by her side, telling of her encounter with the fireman.

"He had become a priest; but coquettish——"

She laughed, not thinking of the priest, thinking of some mysterious, fearful thing.

Regina opened her eyes, passed her hands over her face, still tear-stained, and she felt her mind grow yet darker. At that moment the memory of her dream had for her a solemn signification. From the depths of the unconscious rose up clearly the anguished impression of that distant hour. What had happened then? Under the influence of what pathological phenomenon, presentiment, or suggestion, had she fallen? Perhaps the very hour of her dream had been the hour of the abominable deed.

She remembered to have read instances of that sort of thing—telepathy—clairvoyance——

Doubtless Antonio had thought of her while he was making love to the rich old woman; his disgust, shame, rancour, had been so violent as to project themselves to her, across space, in the very depths of her subconsciousness. Out of that same depth now rose the memory; and the inductions which accompanied it were some sort of comfort to Regina.

But what miserable comfort! Suppose he had sold himself with disgust, shame, rancour? Still he had sold himself. Suppose it had been for love of herself? Still he had sold himself; he had been capable of that! Regina pitied him, because she saw the pitiable side. But she felt that henceforth in her heart there was room for no other kindly sentiment.

All was ruined; and among the grey vestiges trembled only the yellow flowers of pity—too frail to survive among ruins.

But if not a word of it was true? In dark hours the strongest soul becomes the prey of superstition. The dream had been only a dream. In any case, it had knitted itself strangely to reality by the 10,000 lire, the beautiful Apartment, Marianna's laugh.

Marianna! Ah! She at any rate would know! For a space Regina thought of summoning her.

"I will make her speak—by violence if necessary! I will send the nurse and the maid out of the house! I'm stronger than Marianna!"

She closed her fist and looked at it to assure herself of her strength.

"If she won't speak, I'll crush her. I'll cry: 'Oh, you who always speak the truth, speak it now!'"

Already she heard her voice, echoing through the warm silence of her drawing-room.

What would Marianna reply? She would probably laugh.

And suppose none of it were true?

Pride pierced Regina's soul and destroyed the half-formed, indecorous, senseless project.

"Neither Marianna nor any one. I will find out myself."

But after a few moments the turmoil in her thoughts recommenced, and she formed other romantic and irrational projects.

She would follow Antonio.

Some fine night he would go out, and, after strolling hither and thither for an hour, he would open the iron gate leading to Madame's garden, the gate of which Massimo had said, "Here is the entrance for her lovers."

Antonio would go in. Regina would wait outside in the deserted street, in the shadow of the corner. Some one would pass and look at her with brutal eyes, imagining her a night wanderer; but she would take no offence. Why should she take offence? Was she not lower than the lowest of night wanderers? Were not her very clothes woven of shame?

Hours of silent torture would pass.

Antonio was in there, in the oppressive heat of that house decked with furs—voluptuous, feline, like the lair of a tigress. It was all so horrible that, even in her insensate dream, Regina could not think of it. Only she saw the Princess dressed in black velvet, her thick neck roped with pearls, her hands small and sparkling. And the small, sparkling hands were caressing Antonio's beautiful head. And he was silent; he had got used to these caresses.

This idea sufficed to produce in Regina an explosion of grief, which quickly brought on reaction. She awoke from her delirium; thought she saw all the folly of her doubt. None of it was true; none! Such things only happened in novels. It was impossible that Antonio should penetrate furtively into the old woman's house; impossible that his wife should wait outside in the shadow of the corner, to make him a comedy-scene when he came out. Ridiculous!

So the slow day wore on in what seemed physical anguish, more or less acute according to moments, which often completely disappeared, but left the memory of pain and the dread of its return.

Outside the feast of the sun continued, of the blue sky, of happy birds. Now and then a passing carriage broke the silence of the street with a torrent of noise. Then all was quiet again, save that in the distance the continuous rumble of the city ebbed and flowed like the swelling of the sea in an immense shell.

About two Caterina woke up and began to cry. Regina heard this tearless, causeless weeping, and went to the nursery. It was papered with white, and, against this shining background, the bronzed and heavy figure of the nurse with the baby, naked and pink in her hands, woke a new feeling in Regina. She seemed looking at a picture which signified something. But now everything had acquired for her a signification of reproach. That figure of a peasant mother, dark, rough, sweet, like a primitive Madonna, reminded her of what she ought to have been herself. She didn't even know how to be a mother like the meanest of peasants! She was nothing. A parasite—nothing but a parasite!

The nurse was dressing the child and talking to her in a "little language." "Pecchè quetto pianto? (What's all this crying about?) What's the matter? Is little madam cold? Well, we'll put on her lovely little shift, and then her lovely little socks, and then her lovely little shoosies. Look! Look! What lovely little shoosies! Go in, little foot! What? little foot won't go in? Oho, Mr. Foot, that's all very fine, but in you go!"

Caterina, in her chemise, rosy and fat, with her hair ruffled, cried still; but she looked with interest at her white shoes and stuck out her foot.

"There's one gone in! Now the other. Let's see if this Mr. Foot is as naughty as the other Mr. Foot. Up with him! No, this is good Mr. Foot, and we'll give him a big kiss. Up!"

Caterina laughed. Her eyes, with their bluish whites, her whole face, her whole little figure, seemed illuminated. Regina took her in her arms, danced her up and down, pressed her to her heart, made her play, played and laughed with her. "My little, little one! My scagarottina."[7]

"Bah!" said the nurse, very cross. "What's the sense of calling her that? Give her to me. She's cold."

"You had better take her to the Pincio," said Regina, returning the babe to her arms; but Caterina held tight on to her mother, and frowned at the nurse.

"It's too windy on the Pincio," said the peasant, still crosser. "And so, Miss Baby, you don't love me any more, don't you?"

But Regina did not mind the nurse's jealousy. She had so often herself been jealous of the nurse!

---

When the woman and the baby were gone, Regina wandered a little hither and thither through the silent Apartment. What could she do with herself? What could she do? She did not know what to do. She ought to have gone to visit a lady she had met at Madame Makuline's; but the bare idea of dressing herself to go to a drawing-room, where a pack of women would be sitting in a circle, discussing gravely and at length the alarming shape of the sleeves in the latest fashion-book, filled her with melancholy.

What was she to do? What was she to do? Boredom, or at least a feeling which she told herself was boredom, began to oppress her. She could not remember what, up till yesterday, she had been in the habit of doing to exorcise boredom. But she did remember how in the first year of her marriage she used to get bored just like this.

Well, how had she got through that period? What grateful occupation had made her forget the passing of life?

None; she had just been happy.

"What? Am I unhappy now? All because of a piece of nonsense?" she asked herself, sitting down by the window of her bedroom and taking up a little petticoat she was sewing for Baby. "But at that time, too, I was making myself miserable about nothing."

She stitched for five or six minutes. The silence of the room, the quiet, rather melancholy afternoon light, that same distant rumbling of the great shell, which reached her through the warm air, gave her something of the vague and soothing sweetness of dream. The trouble seemed laid.

More minutes passed.

But suddenly the door-bell sounded, and she sprang to her feet, shaken by the electric vibration which infected her nerves.

"Not at home!" she said, running to the maid, who was on her way to open.

Regina returned to her room and shut the door. She didn't even want to know who was seeking her. At that moment, on that day, she hated and despised the whole human kind.

But when the maid told her through the door that the visitor was Signorina Gabrie, Regina rushed to the window and called to the girl, who was just issuing from the house. Gabrie came back. Regina at once repented that she had recalled her. She saw she had been moved to do so by an impulse of despairing curiosity. The student, finding her note-books in disorder, probably suspected Regina had read them; now she had perhaps come in alarm to make excuses for the horrors she had written. A few questions would be enough——

But Regina quickly recovered her proud dignity. No, never! Neither of Gabrie nor of any one would she ask that which it concerned her to know.

Gabrie came in, colourless in her loose black jacket. She was not well; she coughed. Her eyes, however, had kept their cruel brilliance, sharp and shining like needles.

Regina felt afraid of this terrible girl. The future authoress seemed already mistress of a power of divination superior to every other human faculty. She would read her friend's thoughts through her forehead! But the fear only lasted a moment. Gabrie was nothing! Just a little tattler—despicable!

"I was dressing to go out; that's why I said 'Not at home.' Are you cured? I went to see you this morning."

"I know, thanks. Yes, I am better. Go on dressing. I won't sit down. How's Caterina?"

"She's gone out," said Regina, smoothing her hair at the wardrobe mirror.

"Go on dressing," repeated Gabrie. "I'm sorry to be delaying you."

Regina began to dress. She did not know where she was going, but she would certainly go out just to get rid of Gabrie.

"Shall I help?" asked the girl.

"Yes, please. Hook the collar. Oh, these collars! What a torment they are! One wants a maid just for these precious collars!"

"Haven't you got one?" said Gabrie, dryly, fastening the collar.

"That girl? She's a mere scrub."

"Patience! Hold still a moment! How on earth can you wear such a collar? Well, really, women are the victims of fashion!"

Regina felt Gabrie's slim, cold fingers on her neck. The gold-embroidered collar, which reached to her very ears, choked her. She turned round, flushed and angry. Was she angry with Gabrie or with the collar? She did not know, but she flew out at Gabrie.

"Women! Aren't you a woman yourself, pray? Be so kind as to drop that tone. I can't endure it!"

"I know you can't," said the other meekly. "But is that my fault?"

Regina looked at her while she held her breath, fastening the overtight bodice. What did Gabrie mean? Had her words some occult signification?

"How old are you?"

"Why do you ask? I'm twenty. Why?"

"Really?"

"Really. Why should I hide it? As I shan't find a husband——"

"Don't be pathetic. I can't stand that, either."

"I know you can't. Is it my fault?"

"When's your first novel coming out?"

"Sooner than you think," said Gabrie, brightening, but coughing violently.

"Will you put me into it?" said Regina, powdering herself spitefully. The white powder clouded even the looking-glass, and Regina thought—

"Gabrie must find me changed, and she'll be guessing the reason."

She knew she was cross, and felt vexed that she could not command herself. But Gabrie coughed on and made no reply. They went out together.

"Where are you going?" asked Regina.

"Home to my studies."

"Come with me. There'll be matter for an authoress's study. Imagine a room, with ten ladies, all mortal enemies, because each one is afraid she isn't so well dressed as the others!"

"In my books, if ever I write any, there'll be nothing so banal. It's useless for you to take me 'in giro.'"[8]

They both laughed at the pun, but Regina felt that the laugh rang false. She could not make out whether Gabrie suspected her of reading the note-book.

"Good-bye," they said, without shaking hands. The girl went off towards Via Torino and Regina turned in the direction of Via Depretis, holding her smart dress very high. In the silence of the deserted pavement her silk petticoat rustled like the dead leaves of autumn. She was thinking of Gabrie, who had flown to her garret like a bee to its hive, and who had an object in this stupid life. She walked on, but did not know whither she was going.

She went a long way, aimlessly; down and up Via Nazionale; then, scarcely noticing it, she found herself in Via Sistina, going towards the Pincio. Her troubled thoughts followed her like the rustle of her skirts.

On the Pincio she found the nurse with Caterina, and they sat together on one of the terrace benches. There was no music, but the fine day had attracted a crowd of foreigners and carriages. From the bench (while the baby bent from the arms of the stooping nurse, picked up stones, examined them gravely, then still more gravely offered them to another baby,) Regina watched the circling carriages. Slowly she passed under something of a spell as she gazed at the too luminous, too tranquil, too beautiful picture—the pearly sky, the flowery trees among the green trees, the charmingly attired idle figures, the faces like paintings upon china.

As in the background of a stage picture, the beautiful shining horses, the carriages full of fair women, passed and re-passed in a kind of rhythmical course, which fascinated with a sleepy fascination like that of running water.

Once Regina's envy of those fine ladies in their carriages had swollen even to sinful hatred. Now, from the depths of the stupor which overwhelmed her, she felt sorry for them, for the tedium of their existence, their uselessness, their rhythmical course—always the same, always equal, as on the park roads, so also in their lives.

"Let us go. It's turning cold," said the nurse.

Regina started. The sun had gone down, clear in a clear sky, scarce tinted by faint green and rose; an ashen light, gently sad-coloured, fell over the picture. Regina rose docilely and followed the big woman whose bronze countenance was framed by the aureole of a wet-nurse's head-dress.

They walked and walked. Caterina slept on the nurse's powerful shoulder, and the ashy-rose twilight threw its haze over Via Sistina. The portly nurse swayed as she moved like a laden bark. Regina, slender and rustling as a young poplar, followed automatically as if towed by the big woman. When the latter stopped—and she stopped before all the shop windows which showed necklaces and rings—Regina also stopped, her looks veiled and vague.

The long torment of excitement had been succeeded by indefinable torpor. She was walking in a dream. Years and years must have rolled by since she had passed along Via San Lorenzo following the bird-seller. Of all her emotions, now only a vague sadness remained. She seemed no longer in doubt, but finally convinced of the monstrous folly of her suspicion. Only she was unable to recover her accustomed serenity.

Three lame musicians, standing before a gloomy house, sobbed out of their old instruments a lament of supreme melancholy. The pavement was crowded with elderly foreign ladies in hats of impossible ugliness. From every cross-street sounded the warnings of motors. Regina, being short-sighted, was always afraid of the motors, especially in the twilight, when the last light of day was confused in perilous dazzle with the uncertain brightness of the lamps. To-night she was more nervous than usual. She felt as if monsters were rampant through the city, howling to announce their passage. Some fine day one of these monsters would overwhelm her and the baby and the portly nurse, grinding them like grains of barley.

In Piazza Barberini, an old gentleman, stooping slightly, and wearing an overcoat of forgotten fashion buttoned up tightly though the evening was almost hot, passed close to Regina. She recognised the Senator, Arduina's relation, and turned to speak to him; but his ironical though kindly eyes were looking straight before him, and he saw no one.

She had met him several times—once he had even come to visit her—and each time he had talked about England and the English laws, and the English women, repeating the refrain of his old song—"Work, work, work! That is the secret of a good life."

Regina had ended by finding him tiresome, like any other old monomaniac. One could get along very well, even without work; of course one could! But to-night she watched the small, bent figure tripping along, melting into the misty distance of the street, and she thought it even more ridiculous than usual. Nevertheless, it seemed to her that this little gnome-like figure had appeared, as in a fable, to point the moral of her unhappy history.

Ah, well!—to talk like the Master—all life, if one considered it, was an unhappy history. Was it not a most discomfortable sign of the times that a girl of twenty, who had left the green river-banks of her birth-place for the first time, should deliberately set down in her note-book the most hideous things of life, which, moreover, were only calumny?

Antonio came home about seven. As on an evening long ago, the laid table awaited him, and the passage was fragrant with the smell of fried artichokes. Regina, not long returned from her walk, was making out the housekeeping list for the morrow.

Caterina was awake, and Antonio took her at once on his arm and sat down by the window. The lamp-light always excited Caterina and made her even merrier than usual.

"Like the kittens," said the nurse.

The baby, who appeared to cherish a great admiration for her father, sat staring at him for a long time, then gravely showed him one little foot with its sock on and a new shoe.

Antonio understood her.

"Aha! A coquette already! We've got some beautiful shoes, and we want them admired, eh?" he said, nodding his head and taking the little foot in his hand.

But Caterina's face darkened. She frowned horribly, and made a great effort to liberate her foot. She succeeded, but the shoe came off and fell on the floor. Then the young father stooped and, not without difficulty, put the little, hot, pulsing foot back in the shoe, addressing the baby in phrases which, according to Balzac, are ridiculous to read, but in the mouth of a father are sublime.

Caterina replied in her own fashion.

The mother drew nearer, but Antonio and the baby continued their interesting conversation. The young man's eyes were clear and joyous, and once again Regina convinced herself that she had dreamed a hideous dream.

---

And day after day followed, almost exactly similar to this one.