She remembered the time when she, too, had thought of becoming an authoress. She had never succeeded in writing the first line of her first chapter. How far would Gabrie get? Further, it was to be hoped, than Arduina! Regina's thoughts wandered to her husband's relations. They had disappeared, or at least faded from her life, like personages in the opening chapters of a novel who find no opportunity of coming in again. Regina often sent nurse and baby to visit the grand-mother, and she listened to Antonio when he talked of his family. Herself, however, she hardly ever saw any of them, and though now she regarded them as neither more nor less agreeable than a thousand others, she could not resist a feeling of resentment whenever she found herself in their society. But why should she think of them now when she was turning the leaves of Gabrie's note-book? She sought the sequence of ideas. This was it. Confusedly she was thinking that if Antonio, instead of taking her to his relations in that odious Apartment, choked up with lumber and horrible figures like an ugly and ill-painted picture, had brought her to a little, silent, sunny home as humble as even this of the ex-organist, she would not have suffered so acutely during her honeymoon. She put down that note-book and picked up another. Her thoughts now changed their shape like clouds urged by the wind. "No; I should probably have suffered more. I had to suffer, to pass through a crisis. I suppose all wives of any intelligence have to go through it. And now, now it's easy for me to think everything beautiful, because I am happy, because my life has become easy. Ah! What's this? "A young lady of seventeen, of noble though fallen family, anæmic, insincere, vain, envious, ambitious; knows how to conceal her faults under a cold sweetness which seems natural. She is always talking of the upper aristocracy. Some one told her she was like a Virgin of Botticelli's, and ever since she has assumed an air of ecstasy and sentiment. This does not prevent her from being ignobly enamoured of a sign-painter." Regina recalled the enthusiasm with which the Master had read part of this extract to Signora Caterina. She saw again the big Louis XV room, flooded with the burning twilight, the clouds travelling like violet-grey birds over the greenish sky, over the greenish river. "See what a spirit of observation! It's a character for a future story, Signora Caterina. My Gabrie picks up, picks up. She sees a character, observes it, sets it down. She is like a good housewife who keeps everything in case it may come in useful----" The Master talked, and Regina pitied him. The Master read, and Regina recognised in the figure drawn with photographic minuteness the young lady from Sabbioneta.