"What will he do?" she kept thinking; "will he keep on the Apartment? And the maid? Will he betray me? No, he won't betray me. I'm sure of that. I'll suggest he should go back to his mother and brothers. So long as they don't poison his mind against me! Perhaps he'll let the rooms furnished. How much would he get for them? 100 _lire_? But no! he's sentimental about them. He wouldn't like strangers, vulgar creatures perhaps, to come and profane our nest, as he calls it. And shouldn't I hate it myself? Folly! Nonsense! I have suffered so much here that the furniture, these two carpets with the yellow dogs on them, are odious to me. I never wish to see any of the things again! And yet----Come, Regina! you're a fool, a fool, a fool! But what will he do with my _trousseau_ things? Will he take them to his mother's? Well, what do I care? Let him settle it as he likes." Every now and again she was assailed by a thought that had often worried her before. If he were not to forgive? In that case how was their story going to end? But no! Nonsense! It was impossible he should not forgive! At the worst he would come after her to persuade or force her to return. She would resist and convince him. Already she imagined that scene, lived through it. Already she felt the pain of the second parting. Meanwhile she had filled her trunk, but was not at all satisfied with her work. What a horrid, idiotic thing life was! Farewells, and always farewells, until the final farewell of death. "Death! Since we all have to die," she thought, emptying the trunk and rearranging it, "why do we subject ourselves to so much needless annoyance? Why, for instance, am I going away? Well, the time will pass all the same. It's just because one has to die that one must spend one's life as well as one can. A year or two will soon go over, but thirty or forty years are very long. And in two years----Well," she continued, folding and refolding a dress which would not lie flat in the tray, "is it true that in two years our circumstances will have improved? Shall I be happier? Shall I not begin this same life over again--will it not go on for ever and ever to the very end? To die--to go away----Well, for that journey I shan't anyhow have the bother of doing up this detestable portmanteau; There!" (and she snatched up the dress in a fury and flung it away), "why won't even _you_ get yourself folded the way I want? Come, what's the good of taking you at all? There won't be any one to dress for _there_!" She threw herself on the bed and burst into tears. She realised for the moment the absurdity, the _naughtiness_ of her caprice. She repeated that it was all a lie; what she wanted was just to annoy her husband, out of natural malice, out of a childish desire for revenge. But after a minute she got up, dried her eyes, and soberly refolded the dress. When Antonio came in he found her still busy with the luggage.