"Oh dear no!" cried Regina. "I told you he couldn't get away just now. I've been bothered with a lot of palpitation--we've more than a hundred steps, you know. Fancy having to climb a hundred steps three or four times every day! Antonio got anxious and took me to a specialist--an extortioner--who demanded ten _lire_ for just putting a little black cup against my chest! 'Native air,' he said; 'a few months of her native air!' But now I'm all right again. It's almost gone off. I'll stay for a month, or two months at the outside. Then Antonio will come for me----" Mother and daughter talked in dialect, and looked each other fixedly in the face. The moon, white now and high in the heavens from which the clouds had cleared, illumined their brows. Signora Caterina, not yet forty-five years of age, was so like Regina that she seemed her elder sister. Her complexion was even fresher, and she had great innocent eyes, more peaceful than her daughter's. Regina, however, thought her much aged, and her black dress with sleeves puffed on the shoulders, which a year ago she had believed very smart, now seemed absurdly antiquated. "He's coming to fetch you?" repeated the mother; "that's all right." Regina's heart tightened. Would Antonio really come? Suppose he were mortally offended and refused to come? But no--no--she would not even fancy it! Before traversing the short footpath which led between hedges to the villa, she stood to contemplate the beautiful river landscape bathed in moonlight. A veil seemed to have been lifted. Everything now was clear and pure; the air had become fresh and transparent as crystal. The dark green of the grass contrasted with the grey-green of the willows; the ditches reflected the moon and the light trunks of the poplar-trees, whose silver leaves were like lace on the velvet background of the sky. The house, small to her who was returning from the city of enormous buildings, was white against the green of the meadows. Round it the vines festooned from tree to tree, following each other, interlacing with each other, as in some silent nocturnal dance. The great landscape, surrounding and encompassing like the high seas seen from a moving ship, the wide river, familiar from her childhood, with its little fantastic islands, shut in by the solemn outline of the woods, by the far-reaching background, where a few white towers gleamed faintly through the lunar mist, relieved and expanded Regina's soul by pure immensity.