CHAPTER IV
THEY returned to Rome about the middle of August, and changed their dwelling. The mezzanino was really charming, but one of the rooms remained almost empty for lack of furniture.
" We might let it," suggested Regina.
" Fie ! Who's the little bourgeoise now ? " cried Antonio, indignant.
" Oh, one changes as life goes on," she said, not without bitterness; " one gets older, gets whipped, ends by adapting oneself to anything."
She did in fact adapt herself—without knowing why. In herself and in her surroundings, in the quiet life which she and Antonio had resumed, she was sometimes conscious of an emptiness like that in the new Apartment, but she no longer rebelled.
After dinner they would go out arm in arm in the good bourgeois fashion, stifling the gentle tedium of their existence at the Cafe Aragno or in Piazza Colonna, oftener in the streets and avenues round Piazza della Stazione. The little tables in front of the Cafe
Gambrinus or Cafe Morteo were always surrounded by people who at any rate seemed very lively. Crowds tramped the broad streets, bright with electricity and moonlight. Beyond the great white square, where the
177
