"I must seek the last word," she thought.
She rose from her bed, and looked at the clock. It was four in the morning.
She went to her writing-desk, and, leaning her head upon her hand, tried to think what she had come there to do. Then she took a sheet of paper, and wrote a few words upon it. But when she read them over, they displeased her; she tore the paper up, and threw it away. She wrote and tore up three more notes; at last she was contented with this one:
"Cesare, I must say something to you at once. As soon as you read these words, no matter at what hour of the night or morning, come to my room.—Anna."
She sealed the note in an envelope, and addressed it to her husband. She left her room, to go to his. The door was locked; she could see no light, hear no sound within. She slipped the letter through the crack above the threshold.
"Cesare shall speak the last word," she thought.
She returned to her own room, and threw herself upon her bed to watch and wait for him.
V.
Anna got up and opened her window, to let in the sun, but it was a grey morning, grey in sky and sea. Lead-coloured clouds rested on the hill of Posillipo; and the wide Neapolitan landscape looked as if it had been covered with ashes. Few people were in the streets; and the palm in the middle of the Piazza Vittoria waved its long branches languidly in the wintry breeze.