"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.