"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.