"My dear daughter! what are you thinking of? That's a petticoat, not a night-dress! This? Surely that's one of Antonio's flannel shirts? Ah! a flannel night-dress! Dear me! doesn't it tickle you? But I believe it's very cold in your part of the country. It's cold here, too, when the _tramontana_ blows. The _tramontana_ blows for three days at a time. Dear! what lovely embroidery! Did you do it yourself? Listen----" But Regina could listen no longer. Rage possessed her, while the old lady rummaged in the portmanteau, examining everything with the greatest curiosity. Antonio was waltzing round the arm-chair; he suddenly seized Regina, and whirled her away with him. "Oh!" she exclaimed, with a cry of suffering protest, "it's time now to leave me in peace!" The hint was lost upon the old lady. She put everything straight in the portmanteau, then came to Regina and embraced her lengthily. At last she did take herself off, and at last Regina was really alone with her husband, but it was too late for her to feel great comfort in the fact. She undressed and got into bed; into the huge, solid bed, hard, and wide and cold as the bed of a river! She felt shipwrecked; around her floated gaping trunks, boxes, curtains, unpleasing furniture; above beetled the grey ceiling, overwhelming as a rainy sky. Confused noises, vibrations in the silence of night, penetrated from the distance, from some unknown and mysterious place. Arduina's foolish laughter, Claretta's hysterical shrieks, echoed on in the next room. And above these, above all voices far and near, sounded a melancholy whistle, the sibilant lament of some nocturnal train, which seemed to Regina a voice out of other times from a distant place, a cry which called, invited, implored her to--what? She did not know, did not remember; but she was sure she knew that cry, that it had once told her something wonderful, that it was sounding now only for her, having sought her out in the night of the vast, unknown city;--that it was repeating to her things wild, sweet, lacerating---- "At last!" said Antonio, embracing her. "This bed is a limitless desert! Where are you? Oh, what little cold hands! You're trembling! Are you cold?" "No." "Then why do you tremble?" he asked, in another tone; "are you not happy, Regina?" She made no answer. "Are you not happy?" "I'm tired," she said, her eyes shut; "I still feel the shake of the train. Do you hear that whistle?" "Ah!" she went on, as if speaking in a dream, "I know it now! It's the whistle of the little steamer on the Po! Ah! let us start!" "We have hardly arrived, and already you want to go?" he said, his voice half jesting, half bitter. She made no response. He thought she slept, and kept motionless for fear of waking her. But presently he heard her laugh and felt quite cheered. "What's the matter?" he asked, fondling her hand, which was beginning to grow warm.