She started almost resentfully, so far adrift had she been on the happy sea of her realized day-dream that she had lost sight of all other considerations. It seemed to her that thus must she float on and on, from day to day, lapped in the sweetness of her new found love and exalted above all mundane concerns. She turned to him impulsively, "Oh, why can't we live in dreamland just a little longer?" He smiled. "All our life is to be one long dream, darling, from which there will be no awakening,--but we have yet to make it ours." "Are we not together? Is that not enough?" "Yes, darling, and you are coming away with me to a new life,--but we must prepare that new life." She sat up, throwing off her childish unreasonableness, even as she put back the disordered locks of her hair and straightened her hat. "Tell me what I am to do,--I am all yours, dear, you shall decide for me." "Have you a friend with whom you can spend the night? I do not like the idea of your going back for even so few hours to--to your husband," he pronounced the word with an effort. "No," said Ragna quickly, "not my husband. I no longer recognize his right to call himself by that title. You are my husband dear, you and you only!" He thanked her with a smile. "And the friend, have you such an one? We can't get away until to-morrow, and we must not give Valentini any occasion to guess our plans or interfere with them, before I get you safely away. A man like him would be capable of anything, out of spite, and we must not play into his hands. He must know nothing until you are well out of reach. But I do hate the thought, _ma chérie_, of your going back to his roof--is there no one you could go to? You could say you had quarreled with him,--anything--" Ragna thought of Virginia Ferrati, but was afraid of facing her sharp eyes and keen questions. "Yes, I have a friend, a good friend, but I should have to take her into my confidence, and somehow I don't like the idea. I think that until we get away the less anyone knows of our plans, the better. Besides, dear, what harm is there if I do go home? I can arrange things so as not to see my husband,--I can say I have a headache and lock myself into my room." "I don't like the thought of you under his vile roof. You are mine, now, Ragna, do you hear? Mine!" She turned her face flushed with pleasure, and her dewy glistening eyes to him. "Ah, dear, what does it matter for a few hours more, since we know that we belong to each other? I have borne with it all for over five years,--" his gesture forbade reminiscence,--"now it is over and I am free, I am yours--What can a few hours more or less, matter? And then there are the children--I must see them once again, poor little souls!" Her voice broke slightly as she said the last words; Mimmo's trusting little face rose before her eyes, but she thrust the vision away,--even he, for the moment was but a part of the hated past which she wished to blot out.