"No," said Ragna quickly, "not my husband. I no longer recognize his right to call himself by that t.i.tle. You are my husband dear, you and you only!"

He thanked her with a smile.

"And the friend, have you such an one? We can't get away until to-morrow, and we must not give Valentini any occasion to guess our plans or interfere with them, before I get you safely away. A man like him would be capable of anything, out of spite, and we must not play into his hands. He must know nothing until you are well out of reach.

But I do hate the thought, _ma cherie_, of your going back to his roof--is there no one you could go to? You could say you had quarreled with him,--anything--"

Ragna thought of Virginia Ferrati, but was afraid of facing her sharp eyes and keen questions.

"Yes, I have a friend, a good friend, but I should have to take her into my confidence, and somehow I don't like the idea. I think that until we get away the less anyone knows of our plans, the better. Besides, dear, what harm is there if I do go home? I can arrange things so as not to see my husband,--I can say I have a headache and lock myself into my room."

"I don't like the thought of you under his vile roof. You are mine, now, Ragna, do you hear? Mine!"

She turned her face flushed with pleasure, and her dewy glistening eyes to him.

"Ah, dear, what does it matter for a few hours more, since we know that we belong to each other? I have borne with it all for over five years,--" his gesture forbade reminiscence,--"now it is over and I am free, I am yours--What can a few hours more or less, matter? And then there are the children--I must see them once again, poor little souls!"

Her voice broke slightly as she said the last words; Mimmo's trusting little face rose before her eyes, but she thrust the vision away,--even he, for the moment was but a part of the hated past which she wished to blot out.

Angelescu's face took on an undefinable expression, part constraint, part displeasure, part pity. In spite of himself, a vague jealousy of these children, the living proofs of Ragna's past, the concrete, undeniable evidence of her relations with other men. He had even felt a sort of elation, when she had told him, in relating the scene of the morning, of Egidio's threat to keep Mimmo, should she leave her home, thus taking advantage of the rights the law conferred on him. Now that he had found Ragna again, he wanted her all to himself; the past could not be helped and he was ready to accept it in the abstract, and to put it away from them both. But a sense of shame came over him, he seemed to be matching himself against the slender strength of a child. Still somebody must suffer, and after all it was Valentini's fault and not his as he was ready to accept the child as part of the burden he a.s.sumed, and do his conscientious best by it. Ragna's manner when she had talked to him of Beppino had showed him how evidently she considered the child a part of his father as distinct from herself, and he had been glad of it, for while he could bring himself to accept Mimmo, the other, the child of the hated oppressor of the woman he loved would be a burden beyond his endurance. Beppino had thus been eliminated from the question from the very beginning, and as it seemed, he was to be spared the presence of Mimmo also; Ragna and he were to be free to begin their life on a new basis, unenc.u.mbered by the evidences of past bondage. He let his thoughts dwell on these considerations, but was not able to still entirely the p.r.i.c.king of his conscience. It was, perhaps, more to ease this than for any other reason that he gave his consent to Ragna's returning to her home for this one last night.

"Certainly you must see the children again," he a.s.sented gravely.

Ragna glanced at him, her eyes narrowed under thoughtful brows. The constraint of his manner was clearly apparent to her, as was, of course, the cause of it. Would it be the same with this man, as it had been with Egidio? For she recognized the fact that one of the princ.i.p.al reasons of the unhappiness of their marriage, had been the unwelcome presence of Mimmo. Angelescu met her look openly and squarely, he even smiled into her anxious eyes. Ah, she knew, she could not help but see that this man was as far removed from Egidio as the North Pole from the South! However he might suffer, however hard the weight of accepted responsibility might bear on him she would never see the slightest evidence of it, in so far as it should lie in his power to hide it. And his strength lay not only in resolve, but in his power of calmly accepting existing conditions with no looking backward or moody repining; all his energies would be directed towards the future. This much his steadfast eyes told Ragna, and she marvelled anew, as she recognized in this higher more disciplined form the same simplicity of mental att.i.tude towards life as she had envied in Carolina. Still she could not help wondering if the very resolve on his part to accept the past and put it behind them both would not gradually raise a barrier of silence between them, and she saw their ship of happiness wrecked on the reef of the forbidden subject.

Angelescu rose to his feet and held out his hands to Ragna.

"Come, dear, we must be going. We will talk over the rest on the way back. You must not stop out so late as to arouse suspicions."

She took his outstretched hands and sprang up lightly; he drew her to him and kissed her long and tenderly, then, slowly and in silence, they walked hand in hand up the slope.

On the stone steps Ragna paused and turned for a last look down across the olive plantation to the valley; Angelescu's eyes followed hers, it was as though they were unconsciously bidding farewell to the place.

Ragna voiced the vague feeling that possessed them both.

"We have been happy here,--we can never be happier than we have been to-day," she said in a low vibrant voice.

Angelescu raised her hand to his lips.

"No happier, perhaps,--I think too, that it would be impossible, but just as happy, dear!"

She stooped and plucked two small ferns growing in a crevice, one she gave to him, the other she laid in her card-case, saying softly,

"See, they are green--that is for hope."

In the little piazza above they found the _fiaccheraio_ asleep on a stone bench, a straw protruding from his mouth, his rusty hat pulled over his eyes. The horse munched at the oats in his nose-bag, in great contentment, as he slouched between the shafts. On being hailed, the man sat up, rubbing his eyes with grimy knuckles.

"Scusino, Signori," he said, "_schiacciavo un sonnellino_. I did not think the Signori would be ready to leave so soon. _Quando si e giovini_--when one is young,--" he gave a broad wink. "Do the Signori wish to return by the same way as we came?"

"No," said Ragna, "go round the other way by the Villa Fensi and the Barriera S. Niccolo."

"Benone!" said the Jehu, as he stowed the nose-bag under the seat. He scrambled to the box with an agility astounding in one of his bulk, and with a crack of his whip they were off.

The road wound sharply down away from the church, past white _fattorie_ and peasant-farmers' houses. The hill above cast a soft purple shadow over the road and down into the valley.

"Now, darling," said Angelescu, "I have been thinking about how we are to get away. There is a train to-morrow afternoon at three,--before midnight we can be in Switzerland, out of reach. I shall not try to see you in the morning, it is better to be prudent, but I shall be at the railway station at half past two. I shall wait for you in the first cla.s.s _Sala d'aspetto_. You must arrange things so that your absence will not be noticed before we shall have crossed the frontier--after that _je ne crains pas le diable en personne_!" he ended gaily.

Ragna smiled up into his face.

"Bien, I understand. The first cla.s.s waiting room at half past two or a quarter to three."

"You must take with you only what you can't do without for a day or two," he added, "just a dressing case, if you can get it out unnoticed.

We will get everything else you need."

She saw that he wished her to leave behind all that she owed to Valentini's grudging liberality. And he, reading her unspoken answer to her thought, said,

"I am not a rich man, darling, but I have enough for us both--and I can't bear to think of you dressed in the clothes that--"

"I shall wear nothing in future but what you give me," she answered gravely.

There was a pause, then Ragna said, harking back to the moment on the steps below the church,

"This afternoon has been like a foretaste of Heaven. It has been the most perfect happiness I have ever known."

Angelescu slipped his arm behind her, and drew her close to him; her head sank to his shoulder.

"Ah, darling," he answered, "and to think that we have waited so long for it--that so much has happened that was unnecessary."

"No," she returned slowly, the words falling from her lips as the thoughts took definite shape in her mind, "it is best as it is.

I am sincere at this moment, when I say to you that I regret nothing--nothing. If I had not learned what it is to suffer, I should not know how to love you as I do. I see now that it has all been a preparation--for this. If I had gone to you then, I,--we--I think we might not have been so happy. I was too ignorant, I was too hurt and suspicious to appreciate--And I had no real understanding of love. First I had thought it was romance, sentiment,--then I thought I knew it to be pa.s.sion,--afterwards I thought it must be affection, friendship, esteem.

Now I know."

"What is it then?" he asked.

"I don't know that I can explain in words, it is all I have said and more too, it is the feeling I have for you; it is all myself, the essence of my soul, the best that is in me."

There was a short silence, and she continued,

"I said before that I had grown hard and cynical, but I know now that it is not true. Pain has purified me, and I feel, I know--" she drew herself up proudly and turned her face to his, "that I am infinitely more worthy of your love than I was five years ago,--than I was even before Prince Mirko--I was nothing but a silly, vain girl, then, now I am a woman; I know what life is and what I give you I give consciously, in the full knowledge of what it is, of what it means to you, to me, to our life. Yes, I am a better woman."

"Dear!" said Angelescu and his eyes adored her.

He knew that she spoke the truth, that the harsh discipline had unconsciously prepared her for this glorious bursting into bloom, as the cold rains and snows of winter prepare the earth for the flowering of spring, still in his heart of hearts, manlike, he could not help wishing that she might have been his without having been subjected to the bitterness of life. He wished that he might have claimed her, young, innocent, unsuspicious of the evil in the world; he thought that without any experience of the darker side of existence, his love and the happiness she would have found in it, would have sufficed to bring her nature to its perfection of flowering. Unconsciously he resented any influence but his own in the development of the woman he loved. This was his instinct, his reason told him that Ragna was right, and he was thankful, nay, consummately happy, that she should come to him at last, by whatever road, and above all that she should thus surrender herself to him, fully, unreservedly and consciously.

They looked into each other's eyes and their souls met and mingled, even as they had when their lips met under the olives. An ecstasy of joy possessed them but it was no longer the exuberant joy of two hours earlier, rather a joy so deep in its pa.s.sionate intensity as to confine on the borders of pain. It held them body and soul, in a state of exquisite torture, penetrating every fibre of their united being, throbbing in every particle, drawing them into communion with the pulsating ether about them, absorbing them into the vibrant Universe, their joint soul into the All-Soul. They felt their entire unity, one with the other and with the whole of the Creation. For an instant Life in its entirety was epitomized in their life, Eternity itself concentrated in the immeasurable pause, the innermost secret of existence lay bare before their reverent eyes.

They were driving now through a little valley, a cleft in the hills; the road was bordered by high walls over which hung tangles of banksia rose and jasmine. The still evening air held the fragrance till it seemed almost unbearable to the senses through its very sweetness, and the new consciousness of happiness in their hearts was like the perfume in the air. It was one of those moments when it seems that the soul can bear no more, that the very perfection of bliss bears in it the seed of its own decay, poor human nature being unable to sustain the pitch of perfection. Something must snap, something must give way, the wayfarer cannot breathe long the rarefied air of the heights, his stumbling feet bear him of their own accord to the valley.

The carriage stopped suddenly amid the objurgations of the driver, which were echoed with equal violence from the road where appeared suddenly the form of a burly _barocciaio_ precipitated from his slumbers and also from his perch, where he had been indulging in a nap, by the sudden swerve of his horse at a touch of the _fiaccheraio's_ whip. Loud and long was the altercation studded with violent invective in purest _fiorentinaccio_, the reputations of the female relatives of both contestants being the chief point of attack. A small cream-coloured Pomeranian rushed frantically to and fro on the top of the laden _baroccio_, adding his shrill barking to the general uproar. Thus rudely startled from their dream, Ragna and Angelescu looked on, almost dazed.

"Imbecile!" shouted the _fiaccheraio_, "_Bestia!_ Why don't you have an eye to your horse and keep to your side of the road, instead of drinking yourself stupid? _Ubbriaccone!_"