Regina had once dreamed of an eclipse of the sun. Reading Gabrie's page, she remembered that dream, because there was reproduced in her the same feeling of fearful darkness, of portentous silence and terrible expectation.

For a moment. When the moment had passed she again saw the light of the sun, felt again the vibration of life, perceived that everything in the outer world had retained its proper aspect and position, and that nothing was changed. But she was no longer the same. Around her, far and near, the light had returned; within her darkness remained.

She laid the note-book on the table, took up the violets, the biscuits, the book, and she went. Later she saw she had fled from the vulgar temptation to question Gabrie, to force her, even by violence, to tell how she had guessed, whom she had heard speak of the hideous secret. As always, she was sustained by pride, stiff and cold as the iron which sustains the clay of the statue.

The dumb woman ran after the visitor as she departed, and made signs which Regina did not understand. That little figure, like a disguised child, woke in her a kind of ferocious repulsion. Why did such beings exist? Why did not nature or society suppress all maimed, useless, weak persons?

For the rest of her life Regina remembered that quiet little Apartment of the strolling musician, the uneven stair, the equivocal landings, the dusty hall of the big house in Via San Lorenzo; but it was with profound disgust, as if she had there come in contact with all the most foul and miserable things of life. She never returned to it.

Again she traversed the sunny street, the Piazza, the avenues, without noticing any one or anything, though she forced herself to remain calm and not to believe that nonsense which she had read. She would speak of it to Antonio. They would laugh at it together!

However, she was aware that agitation was gaining upon her, and, instead of going back to the garden where nurse and baby were waiting, she sat down on the first bench of the avenue on the right, opposite the Terme.

Why did she not go back to the garden? Why not call the nurse, that they might return home together? She could not.

Suddenly she seemed to hear a distant rumble like that of the immense palpitation of a train passing on some remote and invisible path.

"My God, what is it?"

A lady, with a great roll of red hair twisted at the nape of her neck, passed, looking at her curiously and turning her head as she went by. Regina drew a hand over her face, and understood that she was pale and visibly upset. The distant rumble, the breathless palpitation, came from her interior world, from her own agitated heart.

Then she shook herself all over like a bird just awakened, and tried to return to reality. The violets, the packet and the book were still on her lap. Why had she brought these away? Well, yes; by an instinctive vendetta against Gabrie, who had thrust this thorn into her heart.

"How small I am!" she thought. "What fault is it of hers if that is true? But can it be true? And why? And why did I not ask that at once, that Why?"

Ah! because it was useless to ask!

She knew the answer to this terrible Why. Even before the useless question had shaped itself on her lips the reason Why had sounded in her blood from vein to vein, out of the echoing abysses of her heart.

He had sold himself. Regina did not doubt it for a single instant, nor did the absurd thought pass for a single instant through her mind, that before his marriage he could have been the disinterested lover of that rich old woman.

He had sold himself. He had sold himself for her, for Regina, precisely as women sell themselves, to get money, to get a fine house, light and air, bits of silk, gewgaws, gloves, silk petticoats—all the things she had asked, all the things for lack of which she had reproached him.

"Oh, wretched, stupid boy! to be so weak, so vile. I will come home, I will take you and punish you as one punishes a wicked child! You ought to have understood me—you ought to have understood me!"

But while in her heart she sobbed out these and other recriminations, she felt them vain. Words of a very different truth were resounding in her soul, turning it into a threatening whirlwind.

It was she who had been weak and vile; she who had not understood the seriousness and fatality of life; and now life was punishing her like the wicked child which she had been.

Her head burned and throbbed as if she had literally been beaten. How long had she been sitting on this bench? People passed and stared at her. Young men turned their heads. One of them smiled after a glance of admiration at her green shoes and the edge of her green silk petticoat showing under the flounces of her dress.

She remembered that nurse was waiting in the gardens, but she could not move. Through the veil of her anguish she saw the people passing, the trees, the ruins in their spring clothing of weeds. There was a yellow awning among the ruins, and two doves with grey plumage were kissing in the ivy. The telegraph wires engraved the vivid azure of the heavens. She saw the advertisements on a corner of the Terme, a hunting scene, notice of a sale. She read senseless words, "Odol! Odol! Odol!" which afterwards remained strangely impressed on her memory. Builders were at work in the Piazza, and never afterwards could she forget the earthy red colour of their shirts. She followed with her gaze the scintillations of the wheels of the vehicles.

The simple scene, familiar after having been seen a hundred times, woke in her a profound disquiet, attracted, absorbed her. Then she suddenly realised that she herself was creating this curious interest in it, as an excuse for not moving from the bench, not going back to the gardens, delaying the hour for returning home.

She feared the return home to the house, the thought of which roused in her a sense of horror. All in it was lurid! All! all! all!

She would have liked to strip herself, to strip her baby—to tear from the little soft body, pure as a rosebud, the robes of shame, of prostitution, and take her thus naked on her naked breast, and fly with her, fly, fly——!

Fly! The old idea came back; but this time Regina would have wished to fly to some spot far distant from her native province, away beyond the river which never, never, would she cross again!