"Elena?"
"Well?"
"Do you think he will ever learn the truth?"
"About the denunciation?"
"Yes."
"I should think he is certain to do so."
"Why I did it, and what tempted me, and ... and everything?"
"Yes, indeed, everything."
"Do you think he will think kindly of me then, and forgive me and be
merciful?"
"I am sure he will."
A mysterious glow came into the pallid face.
"Even if he never learns the truth here, he will learn it hereafter,
won't he? Don't you believe in that, Elena--that the dead know all?"
"If I didn't, how could I bear to think of Bruno?"
"True. How selfish I am! I hadn't thought of that. We are in the same
case in some things, Elena."
The future was shining in the brilliant eyes with the radiance of an
unseen sunrise.
"Dear Elena?"
"Ye-s."
"Do you think it will seem long to wait until he comes?"
"Don't talk like that, Donna Roma."
"Why not? It's only a little sooner or later, you know. Will it?"
Elena had turned aside, and Roma answered herself.
"I don't. I think it will pass like a dream--like going to bed at
night and awaking in the morning. And then both together--there."
She took a long deep breath of unutterable joy.
"Oh," she said, "that I may sleep until he comes--knowing all, forgiving
everything, loving me the same as before, and every cruel thought dead
and gone and forgotten."
She asked for pen and paper and wrote a letter to Rossi:
"DEAREST,--I hear the good news, just as I am on the point of
leaving Rome, that you have returned to it, and I write to ask you
not to try to alter what has happened. Believe me, it is better
so. The world wants you, dear, and it doesn't want me any longer.
Therefore return to life, be brave and strong and great, and think
of me no more until we meet again.
"You will know by what I have done that what you thought was quite
unfounded. Whatever people say of me, you must always believe that
I loved you from the first, and that I have never loved anybody
but you.
"You were angry with me when we parted, but more than ever I love
you now. Don't think our love has been wasted. ''Tis better to
have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.' How beautiful!
ROMA."