Like a vein of milk in a poisoned flood, nostalgia for her distant home mingled with Regina's sorrow. Memory absorbed her, penetrated to her blood with the scent of the new leaves which perfumed the shining evenings in Via Balbo. During some walk to Ponte Nomentano or in Trastevere, it sufficed for the splendour of silvery green on the Aniene, or the yellow vision of the Tiber, in the depths of the green, velvety, monotonous Campagna—like the harmonies of a primitive music—to give her attacks of almost tragic homesickness. But now-a-days she knew the nature of this malady—it was the vain longing for a land of dreams lost to her for ever.
She liked these little expeditions, which once she had despised, calling them the silly pleasures of little bourgeois resigned to their gilded mediocrity.
Sometimes Antonio proposed a walk beyond the Trastevere Station for the long, luminous afternoon; and she would meet him at the Exchange. More often they went to Ponte Nomentano, taking the baby with them, carried on the servant's arm. Antonio would amuse himself pretending to pursue Caterina; the maid would run and the baby contort herself with joy, screaming like the swifts, pink with the fearful delight of being hunted and not caught. Then Regina would linger behind, looking at the vermilion sky, the rosy lawns, the tranquil distance, all that grand country of aspect monotonous and solemn; like the life of a poet who has sung immortal songs without ever having had an adventure or committed a crime.
And, watching Antonio running after his child, quivering himself with innocent joy, she once again believed herself deluded in her mistrust of him.
CHAPTER VI
One evening, however, they were walking alone together towards Acqua Acetosa. Making a short cut to the Viale della Regina, they crossed certain narrow lanes beyond Porta Salaria, and Regina suddenly stopped before an osteria (tavern).
A bright interior was visible through an open doorway. At the far end of the room was a glass window coloured by the declining sun, and against this luminous background passed and re-passed, light-footed and black, a couple of dancers, dancing to the strains of a husky concertina. A girl, pale and thin, but bright-eyed, was seated by the door, her arm on the corner of a table, her fair hair mixing in with the shining background. She was something like Gabrie, and dressed like her in a pink blouse. For a moment Regina thought it was she.
"Why, look! there's Gabrie!"
"So it is," replied Antonio.