Then, in one second, flashing and following each other like lightning, a succession of ideas started up in Regina's mind. She would have snatched her hand from Antonio, but fancied he might guess her thoughts from the action, and she stiffened herself to endure the contact. She stiffened in appearance, but her heart was beating violently, two, three, ten, many strokes;—the hour had come!
It seemed to her that some one, some mysterious being, black in the sunset brilliance, had passed by smiting her heart with a hammer. And her heart awaked from the evil stupor of the long oppression. Now she could arise, shake herself, walk; walk, breathe, cry aloud; live, and make a supreme effort to rid herself of the shadow, of the weight of the incubus—or else she must fall again under that weight, under that black shadow, and must die.
From day to day Regina had expected this hour of conflict, yet from day to day she had put it from her like a bitter cup.
Now it had come, and she felt a mysterious fear. Again she would have wished to put it off; but a strange impulse, what seemed an instinct of self-preservation superior to her will, clutched her and forced her to speak.
She remembered none of the words prepared for weeks and months; only Antonio's sentence about Marianna gave her a thread to which she clung desperately, as to a thread which would guide her out of the dark labyrinth.
She had turned and turned in the maze of the evil dream, but she had come back to the precise point where she had stood on the day of the catastrophe.
"No," she began, in a toneless voice; "you cannot guess how malignant Gabrie is. Oh, much more than Marianna! Marianna sees, and sometimes at least says nothing. But Gabrie——If you can bear it, I will tell you something, Antonio."
He turned round and looked at her. She looked at him. It seemed as if for that moment they understood each other without more words. However, she went on.
"You will be patient?"
He looked straight before him, indifferent, too indifferent.