The little woman shook her head, coughed, and touched her forehead to signify that Gabrie had certainly been ill. Then she smiled again, pointed to the window, took a chair, for they had come into the little room, and placed it before Regina. "Will she soon be back? Where is she gone?" The woman took an envelope from Gabrie's table and held it to the wall. "Gone to post a letter, is that it? Well, I'll wait a few minutes, as I am tired. And how's Signor Ennio?" Again the woman smiled, made the gesture of violin-playing, then opened her arms very wide, perhaps to intimate that he had gone a long way, and that his instrument was speaking tenderly and humbly to some German bride and bridegroom in that hour of sun, in the poetry of some suburban inn, lively with chickens and pink with peach-blossom. Regina sat down, and the little woman went away. For some minutes profound silence reigned in the clean little Apartment, full of peace and the odour of baked meats. Gabrie's tiny room, with its pink-flowered yellow paper, its narrow white bed, its little table littered with books and copy-books, its window open on a sky of pearl-strewn azure, gave Regina the idea of a nest on the top of a poplar-tree. Yes! life was lovely even for the poor! Everything was relative. This strolling fiddler, who at night brought two, three, sometimes even five _lire_ home to his little hard-working, dumb wife, and found his little home clean, a good piece of _abbacchio_ (kid) in the oven, and a soft bed waiting for him, was happier than many a millionaire. And Gabrie, with her pluck and her dreams, who saw her life before her long but luminous, like that depth of sky behind her window--who could say how happy she must be! "Happiness is not in our surroundings, but in ourselves," thought Regina. "I declare I once thought myself wretched because I lived on a fifth floor in a house which was in quite a good quarter. Now I believe I could be happy even here--in this house of poor people, in the outskirts of the kingdom of the most miserable!" Still Gabrie did not come in. So much the better, if it meant she was cured. Regina looked at her tiny clock; it was half-past ten. She could wait a little longer. She got up and walked to the window. On the right, on the left, overhead, that dazzling sky; down below the railway, the tall houses tanned by the sun; bits of green, the vague breathing of life and of spring, the immense palpitation of a distant steam engine. All, all was beautiful. Still no Gabrie. Regina left the window and approached the table to set down the violets which she still held in her hand. Her silk petticoat made a great rustling in the silence of the tiny room. Yes; everything was beautiful; not least that little table covered with foolscap and note-books which represented the dream, the essence, the finger-marks of a soul clear and deep as a mirror. Regina took up an open note-book.