"Signora, don't worry about me, I have had trouble before, as you know, and no one can blame me for what is not my fault since you don't."

Ragna looked at the girl in surprise at the simplicity with which she accepted the _fait accompli_, though it was characteristic of her and her race. She could see no reason for weeping over spilt milk, hers was the rational and childlike philosophy of the people--"_cosa fatta capo ha_," and a shrug of the shoulders for the inevitable. The one thought is to "rimediare" in the present. This state of mind appeared to Ragna so entirely enviable and sent her back over so long a train of thought in which she viewed her own experience for the first time with new eyes, and perceiving the uselessness of her futile beating against the bars of her fate, that with difficulty she brought herself back to a sense of the present. She remembered that the maid had not answered her last question.

"Tell me, Carolina, since you did not come to me at once, what has obliged you to speak now?"

"Signora," said the girl pa.s.sionately, "the Padrone looks at me from under his eyebrows, in a way I don't like--I said I was not afraid but I am. I hate him, I can't breathe the same air with him, and before he does anything to me,--or before I go mad and kill him, it is better for me to go."

Ragna stroked the maid's hair absent-mindedly; the Venetian had been with her more than five years now; it would be hard to part with her, for she was entirely devoted to her mistress and the children, especially Mimmo, but it was clearly impossible to keep her longer.

Ragna sighed.

"I am afraid you are right, Carolina. Yes, you must go, although you know how sorry I shall be to lose you. We will talk it over to-morrow, it is late now and I am tired. Run away to bed."

Carolina took her mistress's hand and pressed her lips fervently upon it.

"G.o.d bless you, Signora, and may you sleep well!" She closed the door silently after her.

Ragna sat on in her armchair, immersed in thought, bowed down by this new burden of vicarious shame, outraged and indignant. As the clock struck twelve she heard her husband's latchkey grate in the outer door and she straightened herself up with flushed cheeks. "I will have it out with him here and now," she thought.

"Egidio!" she called, as his step sounded in the pa.s.sage.

He entered the room, an expression of annoyed surprise on his face, called forth by his finding her still up.

"Have you taken to sitting up for me?" he grunted.

"I have been waiting for you, there is something I must speak to you about."

"Well, out with it then, don't keep me waiting all night!"

He leaned against a console, his overcoat unb.u.t.toned and thrown back, his black felt hat pulled down over his eyes, one hand thrust in a pocket, the other brandishing his Tuscan cigar, the villainous fumes of which filled the air.

"What are you going to do about Carolina?" she asked without preamble.

"Carolina?" he said, "why should I do anything? What is Carolina to me?

You have been sitting up all this time to ask me a fool's question like that? You should go to bed, your head is tired, _ti gira ta testa_!"

"Carolina," she returned steadily, "has good cause for complaint against you."

He tapped his forehead with his forefinger.

"You are mad, _mia cara_," he said with a short laugh, but she could see the uneasy expression of his eyes.

"Have done with this fooling," said Ragna scornfully, "will you deny that you have made Carolina your mistress? You had better not, you see I know all."

He bent forward, an ugly look on his face.

"You lie! You spy on me and imagine things."

"It is you who lie, Egidio," said Ragna coldly. She was astonished at her own coolness; pa.s.sion had deserted her, she sat, calm and critical, in the seat of judgment.

With a roar he came and stood over her.

"Take that back! How dare you! How dare you!"

"I am not deaf," said Ragna, "there is no occasion to shout. Please lower your voice and try to behave like a gentleman for once. Go and sit down," she continued without a quiver, "I have not finished yet and I can't speak if you are towering over my chair. And please make up your mind either to speak first and say your say, or else wait until I have done, but don't interrupt me."

Her calmness, the low even tones of her voice imposed on him; raging at her and at himself, he yet obeyed, albeit almost unconsciously, and dropped on a chair under his own portrait.

"It is quite useless to deny or to bl.u.s.ter," said Ragna, "I know all, I am sorry for Carolina, and I--"

"So that s.l.u.t has been to you with her tale," he interrupted, "and you believe her in preference to your husband. The lying hussy--! I'll teach her--"

"Egidio," said the cold accusing voice, "she did not lie, she is a good girl. With all due regard, the one liar in the case is--"

"You dare call me a liar!" he roared, rising from his seat. She waived him back again. "When I was a little boy in school, Cardinal Ferri used to call me up and say--"

"Yes, yes," she said wearily, "that is an old story, I have heard it many times. The good Cardinal was not infallible, or else you have changed since--" He was choking with inarticulate rage; she continued,

"However, that is not the question; what I have been trying to find out is: what are you going to do about Carolina?"

"I shall throw the fool out of my house," he said sullenly.

"You can't do that, she is going of her own accord; but you owe her reparation."

"Reparation!" he raved, "Carolina! reparation! Let her show her face before me again--Reparation! She shall have all she wants and more too!"

Carolina, who, aroused by the noise of her master's rage, was listening at the key-hole slunk away and double-locked herself into her room, where she spent the greater portion of the night on her knees before the little image of the Virgin beseeching protection.

Egidio bounded to Ragna's chair and shook his fist in her face.

"I'll have you to understand that I won't have this sort of thing. I am master in my own house."

"Say harem!" she suggested. His violence left her unmoved, superficially, at least; she only saw how ridiculous he looked, stamping his foot, shaking his fist, his face inflamed and swollen, the eyes blood-shot and starting from their sockets. She laughed.

"My dear Signor Valentini, if you could only see how extremely ludicrous you make yourself!"

With an oath he rushed at her, but she moved not a muscle and the derisive smile never left her face. It cowed him, and with a demented gesture he jammed his hat down over his eyes and flung out of the room.

With shaking fingers Ragna put the drawing and the letter back into the writing-case and returned it to the secret drawer. She felt the effect of the scenes she had just been through, her head was dull and heavy, her senses numb. She went to the dining-room and poured herself a gla.s.s of water, then taking the lamp--she had to steady it with both hands, she went upstairs and pa.s.sed through the children's room on the way to her own, pausing an instant by Mimmo's cot. He lay, moist and rosy, his fair curls tossed back on the pillow; one arm was thrown up and out, the other by his side; the long dark lashes swept his cheek--he was the picture of childish innocence and health. Beppino lay breathing heavily his face puckered to a frown, his fists clenched; he was a handsome child, but lacked Mimmo's winsomeness. Ragna set down the lamp and pulled up the covers about Mimmo's chest where he had thrown them back.

A lump rose in her throat.

"Oh, my little child, my poor little child--that you should have to call that man 'father'!"

Afraid to stop longer, lest in her agitation she should wake the children, she took up the lamp again and went on to her own room. Too weary to sleep, she tossed restlessly on her bed, pressing her cool fingers to her hot forehead and burning eyes. The interview with Carolina, the subsequent scene with her husband, repeated themselves over and over in her tired brain; the demoniac mask of Egidio's which had scared her vision, seemed branded on her very soul like some horrid Medusa-head. And the effect of that exhibition of impotent rage had been that of the Medusa; she had felt herself turning to stone, had almost felt the wells of common human feeling dry up in her heart. Certainly she was no longer conscious of the slightest bond of human interest between herself and this man; nay, to her he had become the _Beast_, no longer a man at all. And she was subject to this Beast, his slave, his chattel, his wife! The name was a mockery. Virginia was a wife indeed, Virginia, happy with her husband and children, living her busy, blessed life in the house she loved. But this--no marriage but a hateful bondage. It was an immoral contradiction to all right living and thinking. Could any man-made law or social convention justify the iniquity of this horror? Ragna wondered dully why she had not been able, like Carolina, to accept the consequences of her weakness. She saw now in the clear light of unsparing self-study, how at the time of her marriage she had wilfully blinded herself to what had been patent to the eyes of Virginia, how she had weakly let the consideration of her social security outweigh the fundamental instincts of her nature. But it was not in the spirit of calm acceptance that she thus put to the test motives and conduct; she was in no condition for dispa.s.sionate investigation or conclusion; her nature, raw and abraded by the events of the day and still more by the c.u.mulative effect of all the preceding days, seethed in a state of bitter revolt. She longed with a fierce, mad desire to straighten her back, to throw off the burden that galled her, to break once and for all the chains that degraded her in her own eyes.

No one who saw her as she was now, fierce-eyed, feverish, her long hair unbound and streaming over the pillow would have known her for the calm stately woman whose formal courtesy of manner was a by-word among her friends. Rather she seemed a Valkyrie riding down the battling clouds, challenging the thunder. It was the old Ragna of the storm-swept fjord, but a Ragna who had eaten of the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, wild with a sense of injustice, resentful of fate.

Gradually she grew calmer, the flame burnt itself out, and weary to the core of her being she relaxed her aching limbs and abandoned her head among the pillows. Dulled, numb, she was dozing off, when a voice seemed to say in her ear: "Angelescu is in Florence." A slight smile parted her dry lips and she fell asleep.