Rossi and Roma stepped up on tiptoe, and as the Father finished his mass
and turned to go they made their declaration. The old man was startled
and disturbed, but the priest commits no crime who listens to the voice
of conscience, and he took their names and gave them his blessing. They
parted at the church door.
"You will write when you cross the frontier?"
"Yes."
"Adieu then, until we meet again!"
"If I am long away from you, Roma...."
"You cannot be long away. You will be with me every day and always."
She was assuming a lively tone to keep up his courage, but there was a
dry glitter in her eyes and a tremor in her voice.
He took her full, round form in his arms for a last embrace. "If the
result of this night's work is that I am arrested and brought back and
imprisoned...."
"I can wait for you," she said.
"If I am banished for life...."
"I can follow you."
"If the worst comes to the worst, and one way or another death itself
should be the fate that falls to me...."
"I can follow you there, too."
"If we meet again we can laugh at all this, Roma."
"Yes, we can laugh at all this," she faltered.
"If not ... Adieu!"
"Adieu!"
She disengaged her clinging arms with one last caress; there was an
instant of unconsciousness, and when she recovered herself he was gone.
At the next moment there came through the darkness the measured tramp,
tramp, tramp of the patrol. With a quivering heart Roma stood and
listened. There was a slight movement among the soldiers, a scarcely
perceptible pause, and then the tramp, tramp, tramp as before. Rossi
looked back as he turned the corner, and saw Roma, in her light cloak,
gliding across the silent street like a ghost.
Three or four hundred yards inside the gate of St. John Lateran in one
of the half-finished tenement houses on the outskirts of Rome, there is
a cellar used as a resting-place and eating-house by the carriers from
the country who bring wine into the city. This cellar was the only place
that seemed to be awake when Rossi walked towards the city walls. Some
eight or nine men, in the rude dress of wine-carriers, lay dozing or
talking on the floor. They had been kept in Rome overnight by the
closing of the gate, and were waiting for it to be opened in the
morning.