She was not guilty of folly in action, but certainly her words became stranger and stranger. Antonio sometimes found them amusing; more often they distressed him. Though seemingly calm, Regina could not hide that she was under the dominion of a fixed idea. What was she thinking about? Even when he held her in his arms, wrapped in his tenderest embrace, Antonio felt her far, immeasurably far, away from him. In the brilliant yet drowsy spring mornings while the young pair still lay in the big white bed, Antonio would repeat his questions to himself: "What do we lack! Are we not happy?"

Through the half-shut windows soft light stole in and gilded the walls. Infinite beatitude seemed to reign in the room veiled by that mist of gold, fragrant with scent, lulled to a repose unshaken by the noises of the distant world. In the profound sweetness of the nuptial chamber Regina felt herself at moments conquered by that somnolent beatitude. Antonio's searching question had its echo in her soul also. What was it that they lacked? They were both of them young and strong; Antonio loved her ardently, blindly. He lived in her. And he was so handsome! His soft hands, his passionate eyes, had a magic which often succeeded in intoxicating her. And yet in those delicious mornings, at the moments when she seemed happiest, while Antonio caressed her hair, pulling it down and studying it like some precious thing, her face would suddenly cloud, and she would re-commence her extravagant speeches.

"What are we doing with our life?"

Antonio was not alarmed.

"What are we doing? We are living; we love, we work, eat, sleep, take our walks, and when we can we go to the play!"

"But that isn't living! Or, at least, it's a useless life, and I'm sick of it!"

"Then what do you want to be doing?"

"I don't know. I'd like to fly! I don't mean sentimentally, I mean really. To fly out of the window, in at the window! I'd like to invent the way!"

"I've thought of it myself sometimes."

"You know nothing about it!" she said, rather piqued. "No, no! I want to do something you couldn't understand one bit; which, for that matter, I don't understand myself!"

"That's very fine!"

"It's like thirsting for an unfindable drink with a thirst nothing else can assuage. If you had once felt it——"

"Oh, yes, I have felt it."

"No, you can't have felt it! You know nothing about it."

"You must explain more clearly."

"Oh, never mind! You don't understand, and that's enough. Let my hair alone, please."

"I say, what a lot of split hairs you have! You ought to have them cut, I was telling you——"

"What do I care about hair? It's a perfectly useless thing."

"Well," he said, after pretending to seek and to find a happy thought, "why don't you become a tram-conductor?" and he imitated the rumble of the tram and the gestures of the conductor.

"I won't demean myself by a reply," she said, and moved away from him; but presently repented and said—

"Do the little bird!"

"I don't know how to do the little bird!"

"Yes, you do. Go on, like a dear!"

"You're making a fool of me. I understand that much."

"You don't understand a bit! You do the little bird so well that I like to see you!"

He drew in his lips, puffed them out, opened and shut them like the beak of a callow bird. She laughed, and he laughed for the pleasure of seeing her laugh, then said—

"What babes we are! If they put that on the stage—good Lord, think of the hisses!"

"Oh, the stage! That's false if you like! And the novel. If you wrote a novel in which life was shown as it really is, every one would cry 'How unnatural!' I do wish I could write!—could describe life as I understand it, as it truly is, with its great littlenesses and its mean greatness! I'd write a book or a play which would astonish Europe!"

He looked at her, pretending to be so overwhelmed that he had no words, and again she felt irritated.

"You don't understand anything! You laugh at me! Yet if I could——"

In spite of himself Antonio became serious.

"Well, why can't you?"

"Because first I should have to——No, I won't tell you. You can't understand! Besides, I can't write; I don't know how to express myself. My thoughts are fine, but I haven't the words. That's the way with so many! What do you suppose great men, the so-called great thinkers, are? Fortunate folk who know how to express themselves! Nietzsche, for instance. Don't you think I and a hundred others have all Nietzsche's ideas, without ever having read them? Only he knew how to set them down, and we don't. I say Nietzsche, but I might just as well say the author of the Imitation."

"You should have married an author," said Antonio, secretly jealous of the man whom Regina had perhaps dreamed of but never met.

Again she felt vexed. "It's quite useless! You don't understand me. I can't get on with authors a bit. Let me alone now. I told you not to fiddle with my hair!"

"Stop! Don't go away! Let's talk more of your great thoughts. You think me an idiot. But listen, I want to say one thing; don't laugh. You want to do something wonderful. Well, an American author—Emerson, I think—said to his wife, that the greatest miracle a woman could perform is——"

"Oh, I know! To have a baby!" she replied, with a forced smile. "But you see, I think humanity useless, life not worth living. Still, I don't commit suicide, so I suppose I do accept life. I admit that a son would be a fine piece of work. I'd enter on it with enthusiasm, with pride, if I were sure my son wouldn't turn out just a little bourgeois like us!"

"He might make a fortune and be a useful member of society."

"Nonsense! Dreams of a little bourgeois!" she said bitterly; "he would be just as unhappy as we are!"

"But I am happy!" protested Antonio.

"If you are happy it shows you don't understand anything about it, and so you are doubly unhappy," she said vehemently, her eyes darkening disquietingly.

"My dear, you're growing as crazy as your great writers."

"There you are! the little bourgeois who doesn't know what he is talking about!"

And so they went on, till Antonio looked at the clock and jumped up with a start.

"It's past the time! My love, if you had to go down to the office every day I assure you these notions would never come into your head."

He hurried to wash; and still busy with the towel, damp and fresh with the cold water, he came back to kiss her.

"You're as pink as a strawberry ice!" she said admiringly, and so they made peace.

With the coming on of the hot days Regina's nostalgia, nervousness and melancholy increased. At night she tossed and turned, and sometimes groaned softly. At last she confessed to Antonio that her heart troubled her.

"Palpitations for hours at a time till I can hardly breathe! It feels as if my chest would burst and let my heart escape. It must be the stairs. I never used to have palpitations!"

Much alarmed, her husband wished to take her to a specialist, but this she opposed.

"It will go off the moment I get away," she said.

They decided she must go at the end of June. Antonio would take his holiday in August and join her, remaining at her mother's for a fortnight.

"After that, if we've any money left, we'll spend a few days at Viareggio."

Regina said neither yea nor nay. After the first seven months the young couple had only 200 lire in hand. This was barely enough for the journey; Antonio, however, hoped to put by a little while his wife was away.

The days passed on; Rome was becoming depopulated, though the first brief spell of heat had been followed by renewal of incessant and tiresome rain.

Antonio counted the days.

"Another ten—another eight—and you'll be gone. What's to become of me all alone for a month?"

Such expressions irritated her. She wished neither to speak nor to think of her departure.

"Alone? Why need you be alone? You've got your mother and your brothers!"

"A wife is more than brothers, more than a mother."

"But if I were to die? Suppose I fell ill and the doctors prescribed a long stay in my home?"

"That's impossible."

"You talk like a child. Why is it impossible? It's very possible indeed!" she said, still vexed; "whatever I say you think it nonsense—a thing which can't happen. Why can't it happen? It's enough to mention some things——"

"But, Regina," he exclaimed, astonished, "what makes you so cross?"

"Well, you just explain to me why it's impossible I should get ill? Am I made of iron? The doctor might forbid me to climb stairs for a while, and might tell me to live in the open air, in the country. If he took that line where would you have me go unless to my home? Would you forbid me to go there?"

"On the contrary, I should be the first to recommend it. But it's not the state of affairs at present. Oh! your palpitation? that will go off. We must see about an Apartment on a lower floor—though, to say truth, I've got to regard this little nest of ours with the greatest affection. We're so cosy here!" he said, looking round lovingly.

She did not reply, but stepped to the window and looked out. Her brow clouded. What was the matter with her? Detestation of the little dwelling where she felt more and more smothered? or irritation at her husband's sentimentality?

"This is Friday," she said presently; "I suppose I ought to go and bid your Princess good-bye. When is she going away?"

"Middle of July, I think. She's going to Carlsbad."

"Well, let her go to the devil, and all the smart people with her!"

"That's wicked! Aren't you going to the country yourself? Think of all the folk who have to stay in the burning city, workmen in factories, bakers at their ovens——"

"Precisely what made me swear!" said Regina.

Later she dressed and went to Madame Makuline's; not because she wanted to see her, but in order to occupy the interminable summer afternoon.

She pinched her waist very tight, and put on a new blue dress with many flounces and a long train; she knew she looked well in it and far more fashionable than on her first arrival in Rome, but the thought gave her little satisfaction.

As she was passing the Costanzi she saw the yellow-faced gentleman who strolled in the "Pussies' Garden." He was talking to a friend, plump as himself with round, dull blue eyes, a restless little red dog under his arm. Regina knew this personage also. He was an actor who played important parts at the Costanzi. Regina fancied the two men looked at her admiringly, and she coloured with satisfaction; then suddenly conceived something blameworthy in her pleasure, and felt angry with herself, as a few hours earlier she had been angry with Antonio for "talking like a child." She arrived at the Princess's in an aggressive humour, and came in with her head very high. She did not speak to the servant nor even look at him, remembering that he always received her husband and herself with a familiarity not exactly disrespectful, but somehow humiliating.

Madame Makuline's drawing-room, though its furs and its carpets had been removed, was still very hot. Branches of lilac in the great metal vases diffused an intense, pungent, almost poisonous fragrance. Only two ladies had called; one of them was abusing Rome to Marianna, and the girl, unusually ugly, in an absurd, low red dress, was protesting ferociously and threatening to bite the slanderer. The Princess listened, pale, cold, her heavy face immobile. Regina came in, and at once Marianna rushed to meet her, crying—

"If you are going to say horrid things, too, I shall go mad!"

Regina sat down, elegantly, winding her train round her feet as she had seen Miss Harris do; and, having learned the subject in dispute, said with a malicious smile—

"Most certainly Rome is odious."

"I'll have to scratch you!" cried Marianna; "and it will be a thousand pities, for you're quite lovely to-day! Now you're blushing and you look better still! Your hat's just like one I saw at Buda-Pesth on a grand duchess."

"Rome odious?" said the Princess, turning to Regina, who was still smiling sarcastically; "that's not what you said a few days ago."

"It's easy to change one's opinion."

"Beg pardon?"

"It's easy to change one's opinion," shouted Regina, irritated; "besides, I said the other day that Rome was delightful for the rich. It's altogether abominable for the poor. The poor man, at Rome, is like a beggar before the shut door of a palace, a beggar gnawing a bone——"

"Which is occasionally snapped up by the rich man's dog," put in Marianna.

The other laughed nervously.

"Just so!" she said.

The Princess raised her little yellow eyes to Regina's face and studied it for a moment, then turned to the lady at her side and talked to her in German. Regina fancied Madame had meant her to understand something by that look, something distressing, disagreeable, humiliating; and her laughter ceased.

"June 28, 1900.

"Antonio,—

"You will read this letter after I am gone, while you are still sad. You will perhaps think it dictated by a passing caprice. If you could only know how many days, how many weeks, how many months even, I have thought it over, examined it, tortured myself with it! If you knew how many and many times I have tried to express in words what I am now going to write to you! I have never found it possible to speak; some tyrannous force has always prevented me from opening my heart to you. I felt that by word of mouth we should never arrive at understanding each other. Who knows whether, even now, you can or will understand me! I fancied it would be easy to explain in a letter; but now—now I feel how painful and difficult it must be. I should have liked to wait till I was there, at home, to write this letter to you; but I don't want to put it off any longer, and above all I don't wish you to think that outside influences, or the wishes of others, have pushed me to this step. No, my best, dearest Antonio! we two by ourselves, far from every strange and molesting voice, we two, alone, shall decide our destiny. Hear me! I am going to try and explain to you my whole thought as best I can. Listen, Antonio! A few days ago I said, 'Suppose I were to fall ill and the doctors were to order me to return to my native air and to stay for a short time in my own country, would you forbid me to obey?' And you ended by confessing you would be the first to counsel obedience. Well, I am really ill, of a moral sickness which consumes me worse than any physical disorder; and I do need to return to my own country and to remain there for some time. Oh, Antonio! my adored, my friend, my brother, force yourself to understand me; to read deep into these lines as if you were reading my very soul! I love you. I married you for love; for that unspeakable love born of dreams and enchantments which is felt but once in a life. More than ever at this moment I feel that I love you, and that I am united to you for my whole life and for what is beyond. When you appeared to me there, on the green river-banks, the line of which had cut like a knife through the horizon of all my dreams, I saw in you something radiant; I saw in you the very incarnation of my most beautiful visions. How many years had I not dreamed of you, waited for you! This delicious expectation was already beginning to be shrouded in fear and sadness, was beginning to seem altogether vague when you appeared! You were to me the whole unknown world, the wondrous world which books, dreams—heredity also—had created within me. You were the burning, the fragrant, the intoxicating whirlwind of life; you were everything my youth, my instinct, my soul, had yearned for of maddest and sweetest. Even if you had been ugly, fat, poorer than you are, I should have loved you. You had come from Rome, you were returning to Rome—that was enough! No one, neither you nor any one not born and bred in provincial remoteness, can conceive what the most paltry official from the capital—dropped by chance into that remoteness—represents to an ignorant visionary girl. How often here in Rome have I not watched the crowds in Via Nazionale, and laughed bitterly while I thought that if the lowest of those little citizens walking there, the meanest, the most anÆmic, the most contemptible of those little clerks, one with an incomplete soul, dropped like an unripe fruit, one of those who now move me only to pity, had passed by on that river-bank before our house—he might have been able to awaken in me an overwhelming passion! My whole soul revolts at the mere thought. But do not you take offence, Antonio! You are not one of those; you were and you are for me something altogether different. And now, though the enchantment of my vain dreams has dissolved, you are for me something entirely beyond even those dreams. You were and you are for me, the one man, the good loyal man, the lover, young and dear, whom the girl places in the centre of all her dreams—which he completes and adorns, dominating them as a statue dominates a garden of flowers.

"But our garden, Antonio, our garden is arid and melancholy. We were as yet too poor to come together and to make a garden. My eyes were blindfolded when I married you and came with you to Rome; I fancied that in Rome our two little incomes would represent as much as they represented in my country. I have perceived, too late, that instead they are hardly sufficient for our daily bread. And on bread alone one cannot live. It means death, or at least grave sickness for any one unused to such a diet. And love, no matter how great, is not enough to cure the sick one!

"Alas! as I repeat, I am sick! The shock of reality, the hardness of that daily bread, has produced in me a sort of moral anÆmia; and the disease has become so acute that I can't get on any longer. For me this life in Rome is a martyrdom. It is absolute necessity that I should flee from it for a time, retire into my den, as they say sick animals do, and get cured—above all, get used to the thought, to the duty, of spending my life like this.

"Antonio! my Antonio! force yourself to understand me, even if I don't succeed in expressing myself as I wish. Let me go back to my nest, to my mother! I will tell her I am really ill and in need of my native air. Leave me with her for a year, or perhaps two. Let us do what we ought to have done in the first instance, let us wait. Let us wait as a betrothed couple waits for the hour of union. I will accustom myself to the idea of a life different from what I had dreamed. Meanwhile your position (and perhaps mine, too, who knows?) will improve. Are there not many who do this? Why, my own cousin did it! Her husband was a professor in the Gymnasium at Milan. Together they could not have managed. But she went back home, and he studied and tried for a better berth, and presently became professor at the Lyceum in another town. Then they were re-united, and now they're as happy as can be.

"'But,' you will say, 'we can live together. We have no lack of anything.'

"'True,' I repeat, 'we don't lack for bread; but one cannot live by bread alone,' Do you remember the evening when I asked you whether from our habitation you could see the Great Bear? You laughed at me and said I was crazy; and who knows! perhaps I am really mad! But I know my madness is of a kind which can be cured; and that is all I want, just to be cured—to be cured before the disease grows worse.

"Listen, Antonio! You also, unintentionally I know, but certainly, have been in the wrong. You did not mean it; it's Fate which has been playing with us! In the sweet evenings of our engagement, when I talked to you of Rome with a tremble in my voice, you ought to have seen I was the dupe of foolish fancies. You ought to have discerned my vain and splendid dream through my words, as one discerns the moon through the evening mist. But instead you fed my dream; you talked of princesses, drawing-rooms, receptions! And when we arrived in Rome, you should have taken me at once to our own little home; you shouldn't have put between us for weeks and months persons dear, of course, to you, but total strangers to me. They were kind to me, I know, and are so still; I did my best to love them, but it was impossible to have communion of spirit with them all at once. Above all, you ought to have kept me away from that world of the rich of which I had dreamed, which is not and never will be mine.

"Do you see? It's as if I had touched the fire and something had been burned in me. Is it my fault? If I am in fault it's because I am not able to pretend. Another woman in my place, feeling as I feel, would pretend, would apparently accept the reality, would remain with you; but—would poison your whole existence! Even I, you remember, I in the first months worried you with my sadness, my complaints, my contempt. I knew how wrong I was, I was ashamed and remorseful. If we had gone on like that, if the idea which I am broaching now had not flashed into my mind, we should have ended as so many end; bickering to-day, scandal to-morrow; crime, perhaps, in the end. I felt a vortex round me. It is not that I am romantic; I am sceptical rather than romantic; but everything small, sordid, vulgar, wounds my soul. I am like a sick person, who at the least annoyance becomes selfish, loses all conscience, and is capable of any bad action. Again I say, is it my fault? I was born like that and I can't re-make myself. There are many women like me, some of them worse because weaker. They don't know how to stop in time, on the edge of the precipice; they neither see, nor study how to avoid it. And yet, Antonio, I do care for you! I love you more, much more than when we were betrothed. I love you most passionately. It is chiefly on this account that I make the sacrifice of exiling myself from you for a while. I don't want to cause you unhappiness! Tears are bathing my face, my whole heart bleeds. But it is necessary, it is fate, that we separate! It kills me thinking of it, but it's necessary, necessary! Dear, dear, dear Antonio! understand me. Beloved Antonio, read and re-read my words, and don't give them a different signification from what is given by my heart. Above all, hear me as if I were lying on your breast, weeping there all my tears. Hear and understand as sometimes you have heard and understood. Do you remember Christmas morning? I was crying, and I fancied I saw your eyes clouded too: it was at that moment I realised that I loved you above everything in all the world, and I decided then to make some sacrifice for you. This is the sacrifice; to leave you for a while in the endeavour to get cured and to come back to you restored and content. Then in my little home I will live for you; and I will work; yes, I also will bring my stone to the edifice of our future well-being. We are young, still too young; we can do a great deal if we really wish it. Neither of us have any doubts of the other; you are sure of me; I also am sure of you. I know how you love me, and that you love me just because I am what I am.

"Listen; after two or three weeks you shall come to my mother's as we have arranged. You must pretend to find me still so unwell that you decide to leave me till I am better. Then you shall return to Rome and live thinking of me. You shall study, compete for some better post. The months will pass, we will write to each other every day, we will economise—or, what is better, accumulate treasures—of love and of money. Our position will improve, and when we come together again we shall begin a new honeymoon, very different from the first, and it shall last for the whole of our life."

Having reached this point in her letter, Regina felt quite frozen up, as if a blast of icy wind had struck her shoulders. This she was writing—was it not all illusion? all a lie? Words! Words! Who could know how the future would be made? The word made came spontaneously into her thought, and she was struck by it. Who makes the future? No one. We make it ourselves by our present.

"I shall make my future with this letter, only not even I can know what future I shall make."

Regina felt afraid of this obscure work; then suddenly she cheered, remembering that all she had written in the letter was really there in her heart. Illusion it might be, but for her it was truth. Then, come what might, why should she be afraid? Life is for those who have the courage to carry out their own ideas!

It seemed needless to prolong the letter. She had already said too many useless things, perhaps without succeeding in the expression of what was really whirling in her soul. She rapidly set down a few concluding lines.

"Write to me at once when you have read this—no, not at once! let a few hours pass first. There is much more I should like to say, but I cannot, my heart is too full, I am in too great suffering. Forgive me, Antonio, if I cause you pain at the moment in which you read this; out of that pain there will be born great joy. Reassure me by telling me you understand and approve my idea. Far away there I shall recover all we have lost in the wretched experience of these last months. I will await your letter as one awaits a sentence; then I will write to you again. I will tell you, or try to tell you, all which now swells my heart to bursting. Good-bye—till we meet again. See! I am already crying at the thought of the kiss which I shall give you before I go. God only knows the anguish, the love, the promise, the hope, which that kiss will contain.

"Whatever you shall think of me, Antonio, at least do not accuse me of lightness. Remember that I am your own Regina; your sick, your strange, but not your disloyal and wicked.

"Regina."

The letter ended, she folded and shut it hurriedly without reading it over. Then she felt qualms; some little word might have escaped her; some little particle which might change the whole sense of a phrase. She reopened the envelope, read with apprehension and distaste, but corrected nothing, added nothing. Her grief was agonising. Ah! how cold, how badly expressed, was that letter! Into its lifeless pages had passed nothing of all which was seething in her heart!

"And I was imagining I could write a novel—a play! I, who am incapable of writing even a letter! But he will understand," she thought, shutting the letter a second time, "I am quite sure he will understand! Now where am I to put it? Suppose he were to find it before I am off? Whatever would happen? He would laugh; but if he finds it afterwards—he will perhaps cry. Ah! that's it, I'll lay it on his little table just before I go."

With these and other trivial thoughts, with little hesitations which she had already considered and resolved, she tried to banish the sadness and anxiety which were agitating her.

She pulled out her trunks, for she was to start next morning by the nine o'clock express, and she had not yet packed a thing. The whole long afternoon had gone by while she was writing.

"What will he do?" she kept thinking; "will he keep on the Apartment? And the maid? Will he betray me? No, he won't betray me. I'm sure of that. I'll suggest he should go back to his mother and brothers. So long as they don't poison his mind against me! Perhaps he'll let the rooms furnished. How much would he get for them? 100 lire? But no! he's sentimental about them. He wouldn't like strangers, vulgar creatures perhaps, to come and profane our nest, as he calls it. And shouldn't I hate it myself? Folly! Nonsense! I have suffered so much here that the furniture, these two carpets with the yellow dogs on them, are odious to me. I never wish to see any of the things again! And yet——Come, Regina! you're a fool, a fool, a fool! But what will he do with my trousseau things? Will he take them to his mother's? Well, what do I care? Let him settle it as he likes."

Every now and again she was assailed by a thought that had often worried her before. If he were not to forgive? In that case how was their story going to end? But no! Nonsense! It was impossible he should not forgive! At the worst he would come after her to persuade or force her to return. She would resist and convince him. Already she imagined that scene, lived through it. Already she felt the pain of the second parting. Meanwhile she had filled her trunk, but was not at all satisfied with her work. What a horrid, idiotic thing life was! Farewells, and always farewells, until the final farewell of death.

"Death! Since we all have to die," she thought, emptying the trunk and rearranging it, "why do we subject ourselves to so much needless annoyance? Why, for instance, am I going away? Well, the time will pass all the same. It's just because one has to die that one must spend one's life as well as one can. A year or two will soon go over, but thirty or forty years are very long. And in two years——Well," she continued, folding and refolding a dress which would not lie flat in the tray, "is it true that in two years our circumstances will have improved? Shall I be happier? Shall I not begin this same life over again—will it not go on for ever and ever to the very end? To die—to go away——Well, for that journey I shan't anyhow have the bother of doing up this detestable portmanteau; There!" (and she snatched up the dress in a fury and flung it away), "why won't even you get yourself folded the way I want? Come, what's the good of taking you at all? There won't be any one to dress for there!"

She threw herself on the bed and burst into tears. She realised for the moment the absurdity, the naughtiness of her caprice. She repeated that it was all a lie; what she wanted was just to annoy her husband, out of natural malice, out of a childish desire for revenge.

But after a minute she got up, dried her eyes, and soberly refolded the dress.

When Antonio came in he found her still busy with the luggage.

"Help me to shut it," said Regina, and while he bent over the lock, which was a little out of order, she added—

"Suppose there's a railway accident, and I get killed?"

"Let's hope not," he replied absently.

"Or suppose I am awfully hurt? Suppose I am taken to some hospital and have to remain there a long time?"

This time he made no reply at all.

"Do say something! What would you do?"

"Why on earth are you always thinking of such things? If you have these fancies why are you going away? There! It's locked. Where are the straps?" he asked, getting up.

She looked at him as he stood before her, so tall, so handsome, so upright, his eyes brilliant in the rosy sunset light.

"To-morrow we shall be far apart!" she cried, flinging herself on his neck and kissing him deliriously; "you will be true to me! Say you will be true to me! Oh, God! if we should never see each other again!"

"You do love me, then?"

"So much—so much——"

He saw her turn pale and tremble, and he pressed her to him, losing all consciousness of himself, overwhelmed by the pleasure and the passion which intoxicated him each time Regina showed him any tenderness.

They kissed each other, and their kisses had a warmth, a bitterness, an occult savour of anguish, which produced a sense of ineffable voluptuousness. Regina wept; Antonio said senseless things and implored her not to leave him.

Then they both laughed.

"After all you aren't going to the North Pole," said Antonio. "I declare you are really crying! Pooh! a month will soon pass. And I'll come very soon. At this hour we'll go out together in a boat, when the Po is all rosy——"

"If there isn't a railway accident!" she said bitterly. "Well! here are the straps. Pull them as tight as you can."