And her doubts tormented her more than ever.
At sunset-time they went back into the house, but they did not yet go away. They wandered through the rooms abandoning themselves to childish extravagances. They ran about in the dark, and Regina, wailing over her dress, amused herself spitefully moving the furniture which Antonio put back into order.
Now and then they renewed their lover-like caresses. The warmth of the spring sunset came through the closed shutters and set Antonio's blood on fire. Regina found a perverse pleasure in enjoying the tenderness of her young husband there where she suspected he had stained the purity of his love.
Turbid poison was boiling in her soul. When Antonio kissed her, and trembled under her unaccustomed kisses, she fixed wild eyes on the dark corners, on the opaque brilliance of the veiled mirrors, trying to penetrate into the secrets of their vanished reflections. It seemed to her that the phantasm of "the old moon," of the purchaser of kisses, was there in the depth of some looking-glass, gnawing herself with jealousy and rage at the sight of Antonio giving his wife caresses, a single one of which all her millions was not sufficient to buy.
Thus Regina thought to take her revenge, but a flood of disgust rose more and more bitter from the depths of her heart. Disgust at herself and disgust at Antonio! How cynical must he be if he could thus disport himself in this place which knew his sin! or, if he were innocent, how contemptible if, with the passivity of a weak man, he could thus violate the house of his benefactress merely to amuse the ill-regulated, hysterical woman, who that day was concealing herself under the white dress and fashionable coiffure of Regina, his wife.
At the bottom of her soul, however, well at the bottom, beyond all consciousness, in its darkest, most mysterious depths, Regina cherished a bitter satisfaction in recognising how utterly this man belonged to herself. Always and everywhere, even in error, it was she who dominated him. And, because of this, notwithstanding all resentment, all disgust, even when she felt she no longer loved her husband, even when she despised herself, thinking her soul stained like her dress, corrupted in the soft air, the half-light, the poisoned fragrance of that house, where, it seemed, "anything might happen," she felt infinite pity for Antonio. And on this pity she lived.
FOOTNOTES:
[9]An evening paper.