He looked at her, and she thought his eyes were illuminated by a flash of anger, cold, metallic, such as she had never seen in him.
"I shouldn't know what to do with riches," he answered quietly.
The servant reappeared at the door, and Regina was silent, struck with a sense of chill. It appeared to her that Antonio's words had an intention of dogged defence, a sharp and crushing reproach like a blow. She felt herself mortally wounded.
The strife was beginning then? For to-day they said no more. On the contrary, after their meal they went together to their room and took their siesta in company, and before going out Antonio kissed his wife with his accustomed slightly languid but affectionate tenderness.
But from henceforth Regina fancied he would be on guard ready to defend himself at all points.
After this they bickered continually. She found annoyance in nothings, criticising all his little defects, and accusing him veiledly in a manner that he ought to understand if he were guilty. Antonio defended himself, but without too much heat, too much offence. She could not avoid the thought that he feared to drive her to extremities, and great sadness overwhelmed her. Why were they each so cowardly? Why did she not dare to confront him openly, though all within her, all her thoughts, recollections, instincts, rose up against him and accused him? Well, at last she confessed it to herself. She was afraid; afraid of the truth. Above all, she was afraid of herself. She believed that nothing kept her generous, enabled her to contemplate pardon, but the hope she was deceived. If it were certainly true, would she pardon? Sometimes she feared she would not.
Most of all her own weaknesses saddened her—the contradictions and phantasms of her sick spirit. Day by day her soul was revealed to her. She had thought herself superior, delicate, understanding; instead, she found she was cowardly and weak. She was like a tree never brought under cultivation, which might have borne good fruit, but, with its tangle of barren branches, only succeeded in throwing a pestiferous shadow. Was it her own fault?
However, in measure as she learned to know herself, she tried to improve. Instinct, too, would not suffer her to persevere in a small strife, in vulgar and inconclusive affronts. The bickering ceased and a truce followed, the result of anguished incertitude and vain hope.
She compared herself to a sick person, who ought to submit to a dangerous operation, and has decided to do so, in hope of regaining health, but who for the present prefers to suffer, and postpones the fateful moment.
Meanwhile the outward existence of this pair followed its equable course, apparently tranquil, all compounded of sweet and monotonous habits. May died, having again become pure, blue, chilly. The sky, after a few days' rain, had taken an almost autumnal tint, beautiful and suggestive.