Afterwards—well, afterwards he had got used to it. One gets used to everything. She herself had got used——Would she get used to this?
A whip would have stung her less than this idea. She leaped to her feet, hurried down the Viale, and entered the garden. It was deserted; already somnolent, scarcely shadowed by the delicate veil of the renascent trees. The nurse had gone.
Automatically Regina went out by the other gate, and paused under the ilices, all sprinkled with the pale gold of their new leaves. It was nearly noon. Was she to go back home? Was not this the just moment, the just occasion for serious flight? She would not re-enter the contaminated house! She would call Antonio to another place and say to him: "Since the fault belongs to us both, let us pardon each other; but in any case let us begin our life over again." Folly! Stuff of romance! In real life such things cannot happen, or do not happen at the just moment. Regina had once childishly run away, leaving her nest merely because it was narrow. Her flight had been a ridiculous caprice, and for that reason she had succeeded in carrying it out. Now, on the other hand, now that her dignity and her honour bade her remove her foot from the house which was soiled by the basest shame, now it was impossible for her to repeat that action!
She hastens her step; her silk flounces rustle. She feels a slight irritation in hearing that sighing of silk which surrounds and follows her. Her thoughts, however, are clearing themselves. As she descends Via Viminale, she seems returning to perfect calm. She must wait, observe, investigate. The world is malicious. People live on calumny, or at least on evil speaking. A man is not to be condemned because a silly school-girl has written down in her note-book a prurient malignity.
It is abject nonsense!
And yet——
The biggest tree has grown from a tiny seed——
Though she seems to have recovered her calm, Regina now and then stops as if overcome by physical pain. She cannot go on; something is pulling her back. But presently the fascination, the attraction of home draws her on, forces her to hasten. She walks on and on almost instinctively, like the horse who feels the place where rest and fodder are awaiting him.
At the corner where Via Viminale is crossed by Via Principe Amedeo, she stops as usual to look at the hats in the milliner's window. She wants a mid-season hat. There is the very one! Of silvery-green straw, trimmed with delicate pale thistles—a perfect poem of spring! But a dark shadow falls over her eyes the moment she perceives she has stopped. For hats, for silk petticoats, for all such miserable things, splendid and putrescent like the slough of a serpent, for these things he——