ork with her
hands all day long, as she had done ever since she was a child, with the
certainty of being tired and hungry and sleepy afterwards. Her hands had
grown smooth and white in a year, and her feet were tender, and she had
almost forgotten what bodily weariness meant.

But she was alone this morning, and she was full of gloomy
presentiments. To stay indoors, or even to go and sit in the accustomed
place under the pine-trees, would be unbearable. She felt quite sure
that when Marcello came back he would be changed, that his expression
would be less frank and natural, that he would avoid her eyes, and that
by and by he would tell her something that would hurt her very much.
Folco had come to take him away, she was quite sure, and it would be
intolerable to sit still and think of it.

She walked fast along the road that leads to the Rosegg glacier, not
even glancing at the few people she met, though most of them stared at
her, for almost every one in Pontresina knew who she was. The reputation
of a great beauty is soon made, and Regina had been seen often enough in
Paris alone with Marcello in a box at the theatre, or dining with him
and two or three other young men at Ritz's or the Cafe Anglais, to be an
object of interest to the clever Parisian "chroniclers." The papers had
duly announced the fact that the beauty had arrived at Pontresina, and
the dwellers in the hotel were delighted to catch a glimpse of her,
while those at Saint Moritz wished that she and Marcello had taken up
their quarters there instead of in the higher village. Old maids with
shawls and camp-stools glared at her round the edge of their parasols.
English girls looked at her in frank admiration, till they were reproved
by their mothers, who looked at her with furtive interest. Young
Englishmen pretended not to see her at all, as they strode along with
their pipes in their mouths; but they had an odd habit of being about
when she passed. An occasional party of German students, who are the
only real Bohemians left to the world in these days of progress, went
sentimentally mad about her for twenty-four hours, and planned serenades
in her honour which did not come off. A fashionable Italian composer
dedicated a song to her, and Marcello asked him to dinner, for which he
was more envied by the summer colony than for his undeniable talent. The
Anglican clergyman declared that he would preach a sermon against her
wickedness, but the hotel-keepers he