With shaking fingers Ragna put the drawing and the letter back into the writing-case and returned it to the secret drawer. She felt the effect of the scenes she had just been through, her head was dull and heavy, her senses numb. She went to the dining-room and poured herself a glass of water, then taking the lamp—she had to steady it with both hands, she went upstairs and passed through the children's room on the way to her own, pausing an instant by Mimmo's cot. He lay, moist and rosy, his fair curls tossed back on the pillow; one arm was thrown up and out, the other by his side; the long dark lashes swept his cheek—he was the picture of childish innocence and health. Beppino lay breathing heavily his face puckered to a frown, his fists clenched; he was a handsome child, but lacked Mimmo's winsomeness. Ragna set down the lamp and pulled up the covers about Mimmo's chest where he had thrown them back. A lump rose in her throat.
"Oh, my little child, my poor little child—that you should have to call that man 'father'!"
Afraid to stop longer, lest in her agitation she should wake the children, she took up the lamp again and went on to her own room. Too weary to sleep, she tossed restlessly on her bed, pressing her cool fingers to her hot forehead and burning eyes. The interview with Carolina, the subsequent scene with her husband, repeated themselves over and over in her tired brain; the demoniac mask of Egidio's which had scared her vision, seemed branded on her very soul like some horrid Medusa-head. And the effect of that exhibition of impotent rage had been that of the Medusa; she had felt herself turning to stone, had almost felt the wells of common human feeling dry up in her heart. Certainly she was no longer conscious of the slightest bond of human interest between herself and this man; nay, to her he had become the Beast, no longer a man at all. And she was subject to this Beast, his slave, his chattel, his wife! The name was a mockery. Virginia was a wife indeed, Virginia, happy with her husband and children, living her busy, blessed life in the house she loved. But this—no marriage but a hateful bondage. It was an immoral contradiction to all right living and thinking. Could any man-made law or social convention justify the iniquity of this horror? Ragna wondered dully why she had not been able, like Carolina, to accept the consequences of her weakness. She saw now in the clear light of unsparing self-study, how at the time of her marriage she had wilfully blinded herself to what had been patent to the eyes of Virginia, how she had weakly let the consideration of her social security outweigh the fundamental instincts of her nature. But it was not in the spirit of calm acceptance that she thus put to the test motives and conduct; she was in no condition for dispassionate investigation or conclusion; her nature, raw and abraded by the events of the day and still more by the cumulative effect of all the preceding days, seethed in a state of bitter revolt. She longed with a fierce, mad desire to straighten her back, to throw off the burden that galled her, to break once and for all the chains that degraded her in her own eyes. No one who saw her as she was now, fierce-eyed, feverish, her long hair unbound and streaming over the pillow would have known her for the calm stately woman whose formal courtesy of manner was a by-word among her friends. Rather she seemed a Valkyrie riding down the battling clouds, challenging the thunder. It was the old Ragna of the storm-swept fjord, but a Ragna who had eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, wild with a sense of injustice, resentful of fate.
Gradually she grew calmer, the flame burnt itself out, and weary to the core of her being she relaxed her aching limbs and abandoned her head among the pillows. Dulled, numb, she was dozing off, when a voice seemed to say in her ear: "Angelescu is in Florence." A slight smile parted her dry lips and she fell asleep.
CHAPTER VIII
Fru Boyesen lay propped up in her high, large bed; her face was congested and she breathed stertorously. With an unconscious gesture she threw back the feather-bed covering her, only to have it instantly replaced by the watchful Ingeborg. The room was close and stuffy, it was cold outside, all the windows were hermetically closed and a fire burned in the porcelain stove. The sick woman's hair had been braided neatly, but with the restless movements of her head, straggling yellowish-grey strands had come loose and strayed over her mottled forehead and on the pillow. With a feverish hand she tugged at the top button of her flannel nightgown.
"Air! I want air!" she muttered.
Ingeborg laid her cool hand on her Aunt's forehead, while she counted the respiration, and under the soothing touch the old woman grew calm for a few minutes.
She had been ill four days, an ordinary attack of bronchitis, the doctor thought at first, but it rapidly ran into pneumonia, and the age of the patient left but a bare chance of recovery. Ingeborg nursed her devotedly assisted by one of the servants and would not hear of calling in outside help.