"Write to me at once when you have read this--no, not at once! let a few hours pass first. There is much more I should like to say, but I cannot, my heart is too full, I am in too great suffering. Forgive me, Antonio, if I cause you pain at the moment in which you read this; out of that pain there will be born great joy. Reassure me by telling me you understand and approve my idea. Far away _there_ I shall recover all we have lost in the wretched experience of these last months. I will await your letter as one awaits a sentence; then I will write to you again. I will tell you, or try to tell you, all which now swells my heart to bursting. Good-bye--till we meet again. See! I am already crying at the thought of the kiss which I shall give you before I go. God only knows the anguish, the love, the promise, the hope, which that kiss will contain. "Whatever you shall think of me, Antonio, at least do not accuse me of lightness. Remember that I am your own Regina; your sick, your strange, but not your disloyal and wicked. "REGINA." The letter ended, she folded and shut it hurriedly without reading it over. Then she felt qualms; some little word might have escaped her; some little particle which might change the whole sense of a phrase. She reopened the envelope, read with apprehension and distaste, but corrected nothing, added nothing. Her grief was agonising. Ah! how cold, how badly expressed, was that letter! Into its lifeless pages had passed nothing of all which was seething in her heart! "And I was imagining I could write a novel--a play! I, who am incapable of writing even a letter! But he will understand," she thought, shutting the letter a second time, "I am quite sure he will understand! Now where am I to put it? Suppose he were to find it before I am off? Whatever would happen? He would laugh; but if he finds it afterwards--he will perhaps cry. Ah! that's it, I'll lay it on his little table just before I go." With these and other trivial thoughts, with little hesitations which she had already considered and resolved, she tried to banish the sadness and anxiety which were agitating her. She pulled out her trunks, for she was to start next morning by the nine o'clock express, and she had not yet packed a thing. The whole long afternoon had gone by while she was writing.