He sauntered jauntily to the door, his thumbs in his armholes; she, leaning on the table, speechless with hatred, followed him with burning eyes.
As the door closed behind him, she sank to a chair, and falling forward, buried her face in her arms, in an attitude of utter despair. One thought possessed her mind; she must get away, she must escape somehow, anyhow; this life was intolerable. Then from the depths of her inner consciousness rose the image of Angelescu—she would see him, she would ask him to help her. He would not refuse,—had he not said he would always be at her service?
Should she write, or should she go in person? She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the long dining-room, her hands clasped, twisting and untwisting her fingers. To and fro, to and fro, like a caged lioness she went, living over in her mind day by day the Calvary of the five years of her marriage. The sense of the oppression of it grew like the rising tide, engulfing prudence, common sense, even the thought of her children, leaving only the wild uncontrollable longing for freedom. Free! She flung her head back and stretched out her arms. Almost she felt the salt kiss of the home-fjord on her face, she offered herself to the buffeting of the strong sea-wind, her lungs inhaled with rapture the balsam of the firs, the wild singing of the gale filled her ears. A mist rose before her eyes, she soared on imaginary wings to undreamt of heights.
Her rapture came to an end as raptures must, and she was again Ragna Valentini, pacing the long dining-room with its high vaulted ceiling, its solid early Renaissance furniture, the untidy remains of luncheon still littering the table, but she no longer felt the oppression of it all. It was as though a veil had been drawn aside disclosing a new landscape, or rather as though having toiled through hardship unspeakable to the uttermost depths of the Valley of Despondency, she saw before her the wondrous vision of sunlit peaks and the Promised Land beyond—no longer a mirage but a blessed actuality. All that she had to do was to enter. A light long extinguished came back to her eyes, she carried her head with a conscious air of resolution.
The manservant entering, started as though at an apparition, so different was she from the reserved, patient mistress he had served. And a scene with the Padrone had had this effect! With admirable self-control the man held his peace, though questions all but burst from his lips—your Italian servant is on a very familiar footing with the family he serves—but his eyes were less discreet, in fact they never left his mistress during the time he spent clearing the table and setting the room to rights, and it may be said that he in no way hastened the process. When he finally withdrew, it was to expatiate in the kitchen on the marvellous change come over the Padrona.
"I said to myself, the Signora will require a glass of Marsala, for he was worse than usual to-day. Mondo ladro! to have to live with a man like that! If it were not for the Signora who is an angel of goodness, I, for one,—"
"That's so," assented the cook.
"But Assunta mia, there she was, she who has looked like wilted grass ever since I came, as fresh as a daisy, with a colour like a sunset in her cheeks. Accitempoli! I all but dropped my tray! To think that with a bella Signora like her, the Padrone should—" He winked knowingly.
"All men are pigs," opined the cook.
"Some things are above the comprehension of females," returned Nando, loftily, his masculine vanity ruffled,—"But all the same—"