"It would do you good."
"I am quite well."
"You can't be well. You are so dull. You don't care for me, that's what it is!"
"Oh, yes, I do! And if I don't, how can I help it?"
Sometimes, indeed, she included even Antonio in the collective hatred which she nourished against everything representative of the city. At those moments he seemed an inferior person, bloodless and half alive, one among all the other useless phantasms scarce visible in the rain, through which she alone in her egotism and her pride loomed gigantic.
But the warm and luminous spring came at last, and troops of men, women and flower-laden children spread themselves through the streets, in the depths of which Regina's short-sighted eyes fancied silvery lakes. In the fragrant evenings, bathed it would seem in golden dust, companies of women, fresh as flowers in their new spring frocks, came down by Via Nazionale, by the Corso, by Via del Tritone. Carriages passed heaped up with roses, red motor-cars flew by, bellowing like young monsters drunk with light, and even they were garlanded with flowers.
Regina walked and walked, on Antonio's arm, or sometimes alone; alone among the crowd, alone in the wave of all those joyous women, whose thoughtlessness she both envied and despised; alone among the smiling parties of sisters, companions, friends, by not one of whom, however, would she have been accompanied for anything in the world! One day, as she was going up Piazza Termini, she saw Arduina in the famous black silk dress with wrinkles on the shoulders. Regina would have avoided her sister-in-law, but did not set about it soon enough.
"I've been to your house," said Arduina; "why are you never at home? it's impossible to catch you. What are you always doing? Where have you been? Even our mother complains of you. Why don't you have a baby?"
"Why don't you? And where are you going?" said Regina, with sarcasm.
"I'm going to the Grand Hotel, to see a very rich English 'miss.' You can come too, if you like. She's worth it!"