letter I left for you, surely you must have written to tell

me so? If you have understood, and have forgiven, or, better still, if you have consented to what I ask, equally in that case you must have written. You cannot be ill, or one of your people would certainly have informed me. Your conduct is so strange that now I am more offended than grieved by it. Am I a child that you punish me in this childish way? Perhaps it has been a caprice on my part; but, mind, it is not the freak of a child! It is one of those caprices which, punished too severely, may end fatally. Antonio, don't suppose your silence will bring me back to your side like a whipped and famished hound. If you think you can take advantage of my love for you, you are altogether mistaken. I will never go back unless you call me; and whether this return is to be soon or not for a long time, that is what we must decide together. Either write or come to me at once. If within eight days you have not replied, I shall not write again--not until you have written yourself. But don't imagine that my answer _then_ could be what it would be _now_. After all, Antonio, we are husband and wife; we are not mere lovers who can allow themselves jesting and nonsense, because their passion is perhaps destined to come to nothing and to remain for them only a memory. You and I are united by duty, and by more serious, stronger, more tragic fetters than passion. If I have been--let us admit it--thoughtless, romantic, even childish, this is no reason why you should be the same. And if you wish to be like that, I, at any rate, don't wish it any longer. This is why I am writing to-day. This is why I still wait. I repeat--write to me or come. We will decide together. And now it all depends upon you whether the fault is to be all mine or all yours, or to belong partly to us both. I am waiting.

"REGINA."

Two days later Antonio replied with a telegram:--

"Starting to-morrow. Meet me at Casalmaggiore. Love and kisses!"

Love and kisses! Then he forgave! He was coming! He would forget--had already forgotten! Regina felt as if she had awakened from an evil dream. Ever afterwards she remembered the immense joy--melancholy perhaps, but on this very account soothing and delicious--which she experienced that day. She seemed to have come off victorious in the family battle. It was she who, just to save appearances, had recalled her husband. He was apparently defeated. But in reality it was she, it was she! And by her own wish and without repentance. Still, by this first victory she had tested her hidden strength and had found it great. Henceforth she could rely upon it as a safeguard in all the dangers of life.

"Life belongs to the strong," she thought, "and who knows, who knows but that I too may succeed in achieving fortune? From this out I am a different person. What has changed me I do not know!" she exclaimed, wandering along by the river as if lovelorn.

"How full of strange incoherence and contradiction is the human soul! Who is it says that inconsistency is the true characteristic of man? Certainly the greater part of our disasters come from punctiliousness, from pride, as to letting ourselves be inconsistent. We often ought to be, we often wish to be, inconsistent. Well!" she continued, increasingly surprised at herself, "it's very strange! A month, a fortnight ago, I was another person! Why, how have I changed like this? Here I am ready, without the smallest complaint, to leave this world which held me so tight. Here I am ready to follow my husband and to take up again the modest monotonous life which I did detest, but which now I do not mind in the least. Is it because I love Antonio? Yes; certainly; but there is some other reason as well--something which I can't make out. I don't want to make it out. I won't torment myself any more. I will understand only that happiness lies in love, in domestic peace, in the picture which life makes, not in the picture's frame. But how wonderfully changed I am!" she repeated, in astonishment. "Such a strange, sudden metamorphosis would seem unnatural in a novel. Yet it is true! the soul--what a strange thing it is! Well, I won't think any more! _He_ is coming, and that is all the world!"

She walked on and on, analysing, and, at the same time, enjoying her happiness. Rays of pleasure flashed across her spirit as she remembered Antonio's eyes, lips, hands. Hers! Hers! Hers, this young man! his love, his soul, his body! She had never before rightly realised this great, this only happiness!

She walked and walked. The sunset hour came. Though it was mid-July, the country was still fresh. Now and then a transparent cloud veiled the sun. A _gabbia_[5] passed her. The driver, fair complexioned and careless as a child, was singing to himself. The wheels seemed mere diaphanous clouds of dust, rosy lilac in the sunset. Quietly the great river rolled in from the horizon; quietly it vanished to the horizon, passing along, calm, luminous, solemn. In its omnipotent force the river also appeared beneficent and happy, bringer of peace to its fertile shores. In the very depths of her soul Regina was stirred by the peace of the wide-stretched valley, by the far-reaching beauty of the horizon, by the sublime, health-giving tranquillity of the fields, the woods, the shores, by all the emanations of grace from what she fancied a god transformed into a stream. She had renewed her youth. Everything within, everything around her was poetic, beautiful, stainless. Sorrow and evil had fled far off, carried away by the river, vanished below the meeting line of earth and heaven. The western sky had become all one soft yet burning rose colour; the Po grew ever redder and more resplendent; the woods were drawn out in long black lines against the flaming background; the pungent perfume of grass hung on the air. Regina, vaguely watching a laden boat as it descended the sunlit water from Cicognara, became pensive and even sad. She asked herself whether all the enchantment of this peace did not hide something insidious, whether it were not like those mock islands covered with evanescent verdure, amorously encircled by the river which yet reserved the right of swallowing them at the first flood; enchanted islets for the eye, unstable and engulfing for the unwary foot.

[5] _Gabbia_, a special cart used in the Mantuan district for carrying wheat, maize, etc.

There were three mills on the river close to where Regina was standing. She had often admired the most ancient one, the lower walls of which were rudely decorated with prehistoric pictures, red and blue scrawls representing the Madonna and St. James, a bush, and a boat. The mill was surrounded by silvery-green water, which dashed against the shining wheel. Boats came and went laden with white sacks. On the platform stood the white figure of the miller, a young woman sometimes by his side.

Regina had often seen those two figures. The man was elderly but still erect, his face shaven, lean and sallow, his cynical green eyes half shut. The young woman also had half-shut, light eyes. She was tall and lithe, pretty, in spite of too rosy a face, and hair dishevelled and over red. She must be the miller's daughter, Regina had supposed, probably in love with the mill servant. Life at the mill must be happy as in a fairy tale.

But later she had heard that the girl was the miller's wife, that he drank, that he was jealous, and kept his wife imprisoned with him in the mill. Evidently a tragedy was being played in the interior of this prehistoric habitation! The running water, the turning wheel, were reciting the eternal tale of human grief--were singing of the jealous, tipsy, disagreeable old man, and of the girl, fiery as her curls, brooding continually over rebellious and sinful thoughts.

The boat, laden with workmen, touched the shore, and Regina recognised one or two whom she knew. They invited her to go with them to the mill, to eat _gnocchi_.[6]

[6] _Gnocchi._ A favourite Italian sweet dish.

She agreed.

The Po was becoming more and more splendid, reflecting the whole west, the great golden clouds, the reversed woods. An enchanted land seemed to be submerged there in the water. Regina admired and was silent, listening to the lively chatter of her companions. They were talking of ghosts. Old Joachin, the rich miller--big, purple-faced, goggle-eyed--one night, when he was passing along the bank in his cart, saw a huge white dog, which jumped out of a bush and silently and obstinately followed him. Who could believe this dog a dog? It was a spirit.

And one moonshiny night Petrin the boatman had seen from the river a most strange, glistening creature flying along the shore.

"A bicycle," pronounced old Joachin, beating his empty pipe against the palm of his hand.

"Oh, very well! Then your white dog was just a white dog!"

Presently the party arrived at the mill. The miller came forward, all smiles, and stretched out his hand to Regina.

"_Ma benissimo!_ This is an honour, Signora Regina! I know you well; and here is my wife, who knows you quite well too!"

The ruddy young woman hung back shyly.

"How do you do?" said Regina, looking at her curiously. She noticed that the miller was not quite so old nor the woman so young as they had seemed from the distance.

The inside of the mill was very clean. A fire was burning at the foot of the plank bed. Pots and pans of red earthenware were arranged on the dresser. The mechanism of the mill was of the most primitive pattern. Two large, round stones of a bluish hue were revolving one upon the other, moved by the wheel. The flour slipped out slowly, falling into a sack.

And the wheel turned and turned, pursued, battered, lashed by the noisy water. Wheel and water seemed to be whirling in a fight, merry in appearance, pitiless and cruel in reality.

Old Joachin took his wife by the shoulder and shook her.

"Go and make the _gnocchi_, woman! Make them as fat as your fingers!"

She giggled, looking at her hands, which were enormous, then took flour and kneaded it with river water.

Regina, finding her presence embarrassed the woman, went to the platform and sat down on a sack of flour. She lost herself in contemplation of the wonderful sunset. Already the sun was touching the river, making a great column of gold. The water came burning down from that magic spot, but upon reaching the mill its fire began to go out, and it disappeared into the east, pallid as mother-o'-pearl.

Regina saw the whirlpools all luminous like immense shells; the mill wheel flapped in the golden water like a huge metallic fan; the falling drops, in which the slant rays of the sun were refracted, showed all the rainbow colours.

The miller drew near Regina and bent towards her. His feet were bare, his thin legs and arms naked. His little green eyes smiled cynically.

"If I may, I'll speak two words with you," he murmured, respectfully.

"Yes?" said Regina.

Instead of two words, he told her a great number of interesting things. For instance, that he had all his teeth; that he paid 100 _lire_ tax on his _richezze mobili_; that the wheel could be stopped with a rope; that his wife was timid and diffident, and always wanted to be tied to her husband's coat tails. Regina listened, half-disappointed that her tragedy had been wholly imaginary.

"You know," said the miller, who, while he talked, never stopped rubbing his arms and scratching one foot with the other, "I wish to goodness she'd go away for a fortnight or a month."

"Why?" asked Regina, ingenuously.

"Why, Signora Regina----" said the man, embarrassed, and scratching with all his might--"well, you have no baby either, have you? And you want one, I suppose? You'll be certain to have one now, after being away for a month. Well, if you'll come with me, I'll show you how we stop the wheel," he said, alarmed lest he had offended her.

Regina followed him. The old man stopped the wheel with the rope and asked his guest to examine the flour, the sack, the mill stones. In the sudden silence of the wheel he laughed without any reason. A dense cloud involved everything. The miller's wife, quite confounded by Regina's presence, turned scarlet as she fried the _gnocchi_. The figures on the platform were silhouetted against the golden background.

The miller looked at Regina and laughed, and suddenly, without knowing why, she laughed herself.