The faintness pa.s.sed, and Sophy sat thinking feverishly how she must act. The directness of her nature guided her. She drew the letter from her pocket, and, rising, went towards Amaldi. He turned when he heard her footstep. As he turned, she stopped where she was, holding out the letter to him.

"Marchese," she said, "I had meant to leave this letter with your mother. I was told you were in Milan. It--it is from--my husband....

Wait!" she cried almost imperiously, as she saw the recoil of his whole figure. "You must listen--you must understand. He ... my husband ... has been very ill. This ... this letter is an apology, Marchese--an apology to you."

Amaldi bowed formally, and took the letter. His face was inscrutable. He started to put the envelope unopened into his pocket.

Sophy, flushing deeply, murmured:

"Won't you even read it?"

Amaldi bowed again.

"There is no need," he said. "An apology offered in this manner"--his tone was rather bitter--"I accept without reading."

Sophy stood silent; then her head went down a little.

"I ... I thank you," she whispered.

A quick change came over Amaldi's face; but she was looking down on the flagged walk and did not see it.

"Do you go soon now?" he asked, his voice almost as low as hers.

"Yes ... on Wednesday."

"It will doubtless be long before you come again to Lago Maggiore?"

"Yes."

"Do not forget us ... entirely."

"No."

"You will not be forgotten...."

There was in his voice such an intensity of pain with difficulty subdued that the trembling seized her again despite all her will. He continued:

"This is farewell ... is it not?" he said.

She could not control her voice to answer. She moved her head in a.s.sent, her eyes still downcast.

"Then ..." said Amaldi, "will you not look at me--to say farewell?"

She lifted her eyes to his--it cost her much to lift them. But she looked up as he had desired, and it was into his bared soul that she looked. There was an instant's silence; then he spoke.

"It is my whole life that goes with you," he said.

She stood gazing at him as though spellbound. Then she half-lifted her hands like a suppliant. She was as white as her gown. But the flood-gates were open now. Neither of them could stay the flood.

"Yes," he went on, "I love you. I've loved you from the first ... with all my soul, with all my life.... I love you with my soul.... Do you understand?... with my soul...."

He took a step towards her. They were both trembling now.

"If you would trust me ... if you would let me shield you ... with my whole life ... with my love ... with love that is worship ...

worship...."

She found her voice at last, and cried out to him as if for mercy:

"No, Amaldi; no! Oh, I implore you!... Stop! It can't be ... it can't be!"

He wheeled where he stood so that his face was hidden from her. It was the instinctive movement of the body that seeks to hide the bared soul.

A moment pa.s.sed. Then she said brokenly:

"I must go now.... I must go back...."

Now he turned to her again. His face was livid. His lips drew when he spoke.

"You will _go back_...?" he stammered. "You will go back to that ...

that _Minotaur_?" His teeth ground on the word. It was terrible to see the man, usually so still, so self-controlled, stripped of all reserve.

"I must.... I must ... for my boy's sake. Ah, don't look at me with such eyes!... I can't bear your face ... so different!"

She trembled still more violently, put up her hand to shut out the ghastly, devastated look of his face.

"You go back? You go back to him?" he kept muttering. "_Che orrore_ ...

_che orrore_...." All at once he gripped himself. He said in a strange, level tone: "There is nothing I can do, then. I would give my life ...

yet there is nothing ... no way that I can serve you...."

"Amaldi ... Amaldi ..." she murmured. She caught his hand in both her own. "Oh, forgive me...." she said; "dear, dear Amaldi, forgive me!"

He bent and kissed the hands that clasped his.

"There is nothing to forgive," he answered.

It seemed to Sophy afterwards, when she came more to her usual self out there on the glee of blue waters, far from Le Vigne, that they two had been like actors moving through some pantomime, during those last moments. In silence they had walked together to the da.r.s.ena; in silence he had a.s.sisted her into the launch; in silence she had sat watching Luigi start the engine. No other farewell had pa.s.sed between them. In the moments following that disastrous, tragic crisis, all convention had withered. They had not even a subconscious sense of the mimic civilities due to Luigi's presence. And over Sophy stole that numbness which comes as anodyne to deep natures which have been called on to endure too many and too violent shocks within a short period. For a few moments, there face to face with Amaldi, she had suffered intensely. Now that was past.

She felt quiet, and oddly cramped, as though crouching in a little capsule of stillness at the cyclone's heart....

They could not leave on Wednesday as they had expected. Bobby's fever had culminated in a sharp attack of jaundice--the result of fright, Camenis told her. But the little fellow recovered rapidly. Only his nerves seemed still taut from the shock. He would shriek out wildly in his sleep, and no one but his mother could soothe these paroxysms of terror. As he grew stronger, she began to pursue with him the course of which she had hinted to Chesney.

"My darling," she would coax, "dada was only showing you how strong he was ... how safe he could hold you. Why, dada wouldn't hurt his little boy for all the world! He's so strong, so strong! He _couldn't_ let Bobby fall. Don't you see, sweetheart?"

Thus she would coax him by the hour. At last it seemed to "seep" into his little brain. "Dada so st'ong," he would repeat. "Dada show Bobby 'ow st'ong! Good dada ... not dwop Bobby!"

At last Sophy ventured to ask one day:

"Don't you want to see poor dada? He's so afraid his little boy doesn't love him any more?"

But Bobby began to tremble.