"That official--was a gravedigger!" she murmured, still dreaming; "if my sister Toscana had been here how she would have laughed!" "She's still in that old home of hers!" thought Antonio jealously. Long afterwards he confided to Regina that that night he had been unable to sleep. He wanted to ask how she liked his mother and the rest, but dared not put the question, guessing intuitively that she would not answer him sincerely. He, too, heard the whistle which had reached the half-slumbering Regina, and had lulled her in memories and hope. "Go? Is she already dreaming of going?" he thought, bitterly; and remembered, not without resentment, her cold, sad, now and then contemptuous manner during those first hours of communion with her new relatives. Yet he could not but feel the measureless distance which divided those relatives from the thoughtful, delicate creature of a superior race whom he had dared to marry. "But she knew all about it!" he reflected; "I had told her everything. I said to her: We're a family of working people, descended from working people. My mother is just the housewife, my sister-in-law is a harmless lunatic. She said she did not care--she loved me, and that was enough. Then what more does she want?" He had a foolish desire to push her away, to distance her from himself in that great, limitless bed; but she was so fragile, so slight, so cold, lying like a dead thing on his warm, pulsing breast! "I've been wrong in bringing her here! I ought to have prepared our own nest, and taken her there at once. She's like an uprooted flower which must be planted at once in an adapted soil." He looked at her with profound tenderness, and remained motionless, lest he should disturb the slumber which had descended on her homesickness and fatigue. CHAPTER II On waking next morning Regina found herself alone in the big hard bed. It was raining; the room was oppressed by a grey, melancholy twilight which seemed thrown from the ceiling. Vehicles were already rolling in the street; screaming trams passed by; there was continued howling of tempestuous wind, the whole making on Regina an impression of unutterable dreariness. The luminous city of her dreams seemed pervaded by this howling wind through which resounded a thousand other voices; a ceaseless booming of toilsome life, dismal under eternal rain. Presently she looked at the room, screwing up her eyes to distinguish the various objects. The grey ceiling, the three grey windows, especially that one at the foot of the bed, were positively funereal; the rough linen of the sheets and pillow-case, the coarse embroidery of their adornment filled her with horror. And Antonio, where was he? In her ill-humour Regina resented his having risen silently so as not to wake her, his having left her alone in the immensity of that strange bed; but almost immediately the door was gently pushed open and Antonio looked in.