"Write to me at once when you have read this—no, not at once! let a few hours pass first. There is much more I should like to say, but I cannot, my heart is too full, I am in too great suffering. Forgive me, Antonio, if I cause you pain at the moment in which you read this; out of that pain there will be born great joy. Reassure me by telling me you understand and approve my idea. Far away there I shall recover all we have lost in the wretched experience of these last months. I will await your letter as one awaits a sentence; then I will write to you again. I will tell you, or try to tell you, all which now swells my heart to bursting. Good-bye—till we meet again. See! I am already crying at the thought of the kiss which I shall give you before I go. God only knows the anguish, the love, the promise, the hope, which that kiss will contain.
"Whatever you shall think of me, Antonio, at least do not accuse me of lightness. Remember that I am your own Regina; your sick, your strange, but not your disloyal and wicked.
"Regina."
The letter ended, she folded and shut it hurriedly without reading it over. Then she felt qualms; some little word might have escaped her; some little particle which might change the whole sense of a phrase. She reopened the envelope, read with apprehension and distaste, but corrected nothing, added nothing. Her grief was agonising. Ah! how cold, how badly expressed, was that letter! Into its lifeless pages had passed nothing of all which was seething in her heart!
"And I was imagining I could write a novel—a play! I, who am incapable of writing even a letter! But he will understand," she thought, shutting the letter a second time, "I am quite sure he will understand! Now where am I to put it? Suppose he were to find it before I am off? Whatever would happen? He would laugh; but if he finds it afterwards—he will perhaps cry. Ah! that's it, I'll lay it on his little table just before I go."
With these and other trivial thoughts, with little hesitations which she had already considered and resolved, she tried to banish the sadness and anxiety which were agitating her.
She pulled out her trunks, for she was to start next morning by the nine o'clock express, and she had not yet packed a thing. The whole long afternoon had gone by while she was writing.
"What will he do?" she kept thinking; "will he keep on the Apartment? And the maid? Will he betray me? No, he won't betray me. I'm sure of that. I'll suggest he should go back to his mother and brothers. So long as they don't poison his mind against me! Perhaps he'll let the rooms furnished. How much would he get for them? 100 lire? But no! he's sentimental about them. He wouldn't like strangers, vulgar creatures perhaps, to come and profane our nest, as he calls it. And shouldn't I hate it myself? Folly! Nonsense! I have suffered so much here that the furniture, these two carpets with the yellow dogs on them, are odious to me. I never wish to see any of the things again! And yet——Come, Regina! you're a fool, a fool, a fool! But what will he do with my trousseau things? Will he take them to his mother's? Well, what do I care? Let him settle it as he likes."
Every now and again she was assailed by a thought that had often worried her before. If he were not to forgive? In that case how was their story going to end? But no! Nonsense! It was impossible he should not forgive! At the worst he would come after her to persuade or force her to return. She would resist and convince him. Already she imagined that scene, lived through it. Already she felt the pain of the second parting. Meanwhile she had filled her trunk, but was not at all satisfied with her work. What a horrid, idiotic thing life was! Farewells, and always farewells, until the final farewell of death.
"Death! Since we all have to die," she thought, emptying the trunk and rearranging it, "why do we subject ourselves to so much needless annoyance? Why, for instance, am I going away? Well, the time will pass all the same. It's just because one has to die that one must spend one's life as well as one can. A year or two will soon go over, but thirty or forty years are very long. And in two years——Well," she continued, folding and refolding a dress which would not lie flat in the tray, "is it true that in two years our circumstances will have improved? Shall I be happier? Shall I not begin this same life over again—will it not go on for ever and ever to the very end? To die—to go away——Well, for that journey I shan't anyhow have the bother of doing up this detestable portmanteau; There!" (and she snatched up the dress in a fury and flung it away), "why won't even you get yourself folded the way I want? Come, what's the good of taking you at all? There won't be any one to dress for there!"
She threw herself on the bed and burst into tears. She realised for the moment the absurdity, the naughtiness of her caprice. She repeated that it was all a lie; what she wanted was just to annoy her husband, out of natural malice, out of a childish desire for revenge.
But after a minute she got up, dried her eyes, and soberly refolded the dress.