He did not speak, but his head was held up and his face was shining.
"Are you not afraid to tell me this?"
"No."
Her eyes glistened and her lips quivered.
"You insulted and humiliated me in public this morning, yet you think I
will keep your secret?"
"I know you will."
She felt a sensation of swelling in her throbbing heart, and with a slow
and nervous gesture she held out her hand.
"May I ... may I shake hands with you?" she said.
There was a moment of hesitation, and then their hands seemed to leap at
each other and clasp with a clasp of fire.
At the next instant he had lifted her hand to his lips and was kissing
it again and again.
A sensation of triumphant joy flashed through her, and instantly died
away. She wished to cry out, to confess, to say something, she knew not
what. But David Leone is dead rang in her ears, and at the same moment
she remembered what the impulse had been which brought her to that
house.
Then her eyes began to swim and her heart to fail, and she wanted to fly
away without uttering another word. She could not speak, he could
not speak; they stood together on a precipice where only by silence
could they hold their heads.
"Let me go home," she said in a breaking voice, and with downcast head
and trembling limbs she stepped to the door.
IX
Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a
voice still soft, but coming more from within: "I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are
not the man I thought you were."
"Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you."
A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said: "Then you had never seen me before?"
And he answered after a moment: "I had never seen Donna Roma Volonna until to-day."
"Forgive me for coming to you," she said.
"I thank you for doing so," he replied, "and if I have sinned against
you, from this hour onward I am your friend and champion. Let me try to
right the wrong I have done you. What I said was the result of a
mistake--let me ask your forgiveness."
"You mean publicly?"
"Yes!"
"You are very good, very brave," she said; "but no, I will not ask you
to do that."