Regina, far away from him in the great cold bed, had a hopeless feeling of abandonment. She seemed to have lost herself in a boundless, frozen plain; the screaming breath of the tram reproduced the drive of the rain, the roar of the wet wind. All around was cloud, and only far, far, far away shone the crimson of a lighted hearth, glimmered the silver of a river——
"Why did I leave my home?" she asked herself, dully; "I've let myself be rooted up like a poplar; and now, like the poplar-wood, I've been carted here to make part of this odious construction which is called a great city. I also shall warp and rot—get worm-eaten, fall——"
Then she asked herself did she really love Antonio? There were moments when she answered "No;" other moments when she melted at the thought of him.
"I shall make him miserable! He told me what to expect in Rome; a modest life, a middle-class family. Did I not accept it? Well—well! we shall all die! We must be resigned to our destiny. Every hour will come, and the hour of death is the most certain of all. To die! To have no more suffering from homesickness—never again to see my mother-in-law, Arduina, Sor Gaspare, that maid Marina; to wander no further in the rain seeking an Apartment! No—I don't want to torment Antonio any more. Is it his fault that all the miseries of civilisation interfere between him and me? He didn't know it, and neither did I know it. But we shall all die at last! We must be resigned, and go and live in Via d'Azeglio. The days will pass there as they pass everywhere."
She slept, pleased with her philosophy; and, of course, she dreamed of the distant home, the woods, the blazing logs, the windows radiant in the sunset, the kitten on the window-sill contemplating the stem of the poplar-tree. Next morning daylight met her in the detestable Venutelli room; she lay under the incubus of the grey ceiling; she must get up, endure the cold, the rain, the company of Signora Anna! Resignation? It was very well in theory; in practice her nerves revolted fiercely against the reality.
At last, after a month of vain search, more in the end from weariness than from good-will, Regina consented to the suite in the Via d'Azeglio for one year. Yet on the very day of signing the agreement she repented, abandoning all self-control.
"Was it worth while leaving my home and coming to Rome to live in a box? I shall be suffocated! I shall die!" she cried.
Nor could Antonio longer contain himself.
"Can't you say what it is you want?" he exclaimed in a fury. "Did you imagine you were marrying a prince? You knew all I had to offer! You told me a hundred times you hadn't corrupted your soul with vain ambitions; you said you were robust and unselfish; you said you didn't ask impossible things of life! Why don't you look back instead of always looking ahead? Didn't you say you were a bit of a Socialist? Well, then, why don't you compare your condition with that of millions and millions of other women?"
She wept, leaning her forehead against the window-pane. Of course it was raining, and it seemed to her that the heavens wept with her. She knew Antonio was right, although he looked at the matter merely on its material side, and did not understand the real causes of her discontent.