She walked and walked. The sunset hour came. Though it was mid-July, the country was still fresh. Now and then a transparent cloud veiled the sun. A _gabbia_[5] passed her. The driver, fair complexioned and careless as a child, was singing to himself. The wheels seemed mere diaphanous clouds of dust, rosy lilac in the sunset. Quietly the great river rolled in from the horizon; quietly it vanished to the horizon, passing along, calm, luminous, solemn. In its omnipotent force the river also appeared beneficent and happy, bringer of peace to its fertile shores. In the very depths of her soul Regina was stirred by the peace of the wide-stretched valley, by the far-reaching beauty of the horizon, by the sublime, health-giving tranquillity of the fields, the woods, the shores, by all the emanations of grace from what she fancied a god transformed into a stream. She had renewed her youth. Everything within, everything around her was poetic, beautiful, stainless. Sorrow and evil had fled far off, carried away by the river, vanished below the meeting line of earth and heaven. The western sky had become all one soft yet burning rose colour; the Po grew ever redder and more resplendent; the woods were drawn out in long black lines against the flaming background; the pungent perfume of grass hung on the air. Regina, vaguely watching a laden boat as it descended the sunlit water from Cicognara, became pensive and even sad. She asked herself whether all the enchantment of this peace did not hide something insidious, whether it were not like those mock islands covered with evanescent verdure, amorously encircled by the river which yet reserved the right of swallowing them at the first flood; enchanted islets for the eye, unstable and engulfing for the unwary foot. [5] _Gabbia_, a special cart used in the Mantuan district for carrying wheat, maize, etc. There were three mills on the river close to where Regina was standing. She had often admired the most ancient one, the lower walls of which were rudely decorated with prehistoric pictures, red and blue scrawls representing the Madonna and St. James, a bush, and a boat. The mill was surrounded by silvery-green water, which dashed against the shining wheel. Boats came and went laden with white sacks. On the platform stood the white figure of the miller, a young woman sometimes by his side. Regina had often seen those two figures. The man was elderly but still erect, his face shaven, lean and sallow, his cynical green eyes half shut. The young woman also had half-shut, light eyes. She was tall and lithe, pretty, in spite of too rosy a face, and hair dishevelled and over red. She must be the miller's daughter, Regina had supposed, probably in love with the mill servant. Life at the mill must be happy as in a fairy tale.