But what was he doing? Had he shut up the Apartment in Via d'Azeglio and gone back to his family? The mere recollection of the marble stair which led to that place of suffering, to that low, grey room where a mysterious incubus had weighed down her soul, was enough to darken her countenance. She wrote again. Antonio did not reply. Then Regina felt something rebound violently within her, like a rod which straightens itself with a whirr after breaking the fetters which have tied it down. It was her pride. She thought Antonio must have guessed her unspoken drama of grief, lament, tenderness and remorse, and that he was passing the bounds of just punishment. "He is taking advantage of me," she thought, "but we will see which is the stronger!" "Antonio," she wrote to him, "I have been here for a whole fortnight of patience and suffering. What is the meaning of your silence? If you have neither understood nor pardoned the letter I left for you, surely you must have written to tell me so? If you have understood, and have forgiven, or, better still, if you have consented to what I ask, equally in that case you must have written. You cannot be ill, or one of your people would certainly have informed me. Your conduct is so strange that now I am more offended than grieved by it. Am I a child that you punish me in this childish way? Perhaps it has been a caprice on my part; but, mind, it is not the freak of a child! It is one of those caprices which, punished too severely, may end fatally. Antonio, don't suppose your silence will bring me back to your side like a whipped and famished hound. If you think you can take advantage of my love for you, you are altogether mistaken. I will never go back unless you call me; and whether this return is to be soon or not for a long time, that is what we must decide together. Either write or come to me at once. If within eight days you have not replied, I shall not write again--not until you have written yourself. But don't imagine that my answer _then_ could be what it would be _now_. After all, Antonio, we are husband and wife; we are not mere lovers who can allow themselves jesting and nonsense, because their passion is perhaps destined to come to nothing and to remain for them only a memory. You and I are united by duty, and by more serious, stronger, more tragic fetters than passion. If I have been--let us admit it--thoughtless, romantic, even childish, this is no reason why you should be the same. And if you wish to be like that, I, at any rate, don't wish it any longer. This is why I am writing to-day. This is why I still wait. I repeat--write to me or come. We will decide together. And now it all depends upon you whether the fault is to be all mine or all yours, or to belong partly to us both. I am waiting. "REGINA."