She did not look at him at once, for she was almost afraid to meet his eyes, but she heard him catch his breath, as though to strangle a sigh by main force, and his head moved on the cushion.

She had begun to hurt him.

"I thought you might," he said, faintly but steadily. "I almost thought you did."

"No," she repeated, with ever-increasing gentleness. "No. Do not think that--please do not!"

He said nothing, but again he moved his head. Then, seeing that the moment had come, and that she must face it with truth or lie to him while he lived, she turned her face bravely towards him, to tell him all her heart.

"You are the only real friend I have in the world," she said. "But I can never love you--never, Gianluca--never. It is not in me. There is no one in the whole world for whom I care as I do for you. I cannot imagine anything that I could not do for your sake. But not love--not love. That is something else. I do not know what it means. You could make me understand anything but that. Oh--why must I say it, when it is so hard to say?"

His face seemed cut, as a mask of pain, in alabaster, and the appealing, hungry eyes waited for each fresh hurt.

"You made me think that you might love me," he said, the slow words hardly forming themselves on his dry lips.

"Then G.o.d forgive me!" she cried, clasping her hands and bending her face over them. "And yet--and yet I knew it. I felt it. I meant to tell you, if you did not know! I only wished not to hurt you--it is so hard to say."

"Yes," he answered, scarcely above his breath. "I see it is," he added, after a long time.

As he lay in the deep chair, he turned his face from her, on the cushion, till she could not see his eyes, and then was quite still. It would have been easier if he had reproached her vehemently, if he had turned and tried to win her again, and poured out his heart full of love. But he lay there, like a dead angel, with his face turned from her, hardly breathing.

"I have been cowardly, and base, and bad!" she cried, bending over her clasped hands, and speaking to herself. "I should have said it--I said it long ago, at Bianca's, and I should have said it again--but I was afraid--afraid--oh! afraid!"

Her low voice trembled in anger against herself, in pity for him, in sorrow for them both. She looked up and saw him still motionless. It was as though she had killed him and were sitting beside his body. But he still lived, and might live. For one instant she felt a mad impulse to give him her life, to marry him, not loving him, to save him if she could, to atone for what she had done. But a horrible under-thought told her that it would be but gambling for her freedom with his existence, and that if she did it, she should do it because she felt that he must surely die. Even her simplicity seemed gone. She looked again; he had not moved.

She threw herself upon her knees, beside his great chair, her clasped hands on his thin shoulder, in a sort of agony of despair.

"Speak to me!" she cried. "Forgive me--say that I have not killed you--Gianluca--dear!"

One shadowy hand of his was lifted, and touched hers. It was as cold as though it had lain dead in the dew. She took it quickly and held it fast. He did not turn his head.

"It has been my life," he said, "my whole life."

He did not try to draw away his hand, but let her hold it, if she would.

There was still magic in her touch.

"Forgive me!" she repeated more softly, and her cheek touched the arm of the chair. "Forgive me!"

At last he turned his face very wearily and slowly on the brown silk cushion, and looked at her bent head. Instinctively she raised her hot eyes.

"Forgive you?" He spoke very sorrowfully. "I love you. What is there to forgive? It is not your fault--"

"It is--it is!" she cried, speaking into his sad eyes for forgiveness, with all her soul.

"I shall die--but it is not your fault," he answered, and he sank back, for he had raised himself a little. "It is not your fault," he repeated.

"Do not ask me to forgive you. Perhaps I should have lived longer--I do not know, for I only lived for you. No--I am quiet now. I can speak better than I could. You must not think that you have killed me, if I die. Men live through worse, but not men like me, perhaps. Something else is killing me slowly, but they will not tell me what it is. Never mind. It will do as well without a name, and if I get well, it needs none. After all, I am not dead yet, and while I am alive, I can love you. You have been all to me. If you had loved me, I should have had more than all the world, and that would have been too much. If I deceived myself, loving you as I did,--as I do,--it is not your fault, Veronica. It is not your fault. There was a time last year, when I would have done anything, given everything, life and all, for one of a thousand words you have written and said to me since then--when I would have committed crimes for the touch of this little hand. Do you see? It is all my fault. That is what I wanted you to understand."

He had said all he could, and his breath came with an effort at the last. But his lips smiled bravely as he looked at her, still kneeling by his side. Then he seemed to realize that she should not be there.

"Get up, dear," he said, with failing voice. "You must not kneel--some one might come--they would think--that you meant--something."

His lids quivered and closed, and his lips trembled oddly. She felt his hand relax, and she thought that he was gone. Instantly she sprang to her feet beside him, and lifted his head, her face full of the horror that goes before the wave of pain for those one loves. But he had not even fainted. He opened his eyes, and smiled, and tried to speak again, but could not.

Veronica's lips moved, too, as she stood there, supporting him a little with her arm and stiffened with terror for his life. But she could not speak either. She watched his face with most intense anxiety. Again and again, he opened his eyes, and saw her, and he felt her arm under him.

"It is nothing," he said suddenly. "I was a little faint."

She drew away her arm with a deep breath of relief, and he sighed when it was gone. But neither of them spoke. Veronica rang, and sent for his favourite wine, and he drank a little of it. Then she sat down beside him, where she had sat before, and the room was very still.

It was hot, too, for no one had opened the window since it had stopped raining. Veronica rose and undid the fastenings and threw back the gla.s.s, and the cool air rushed in, laden with the sweet smell of the wet earth. As she came back, she saw that his eyes followed all her movements, gravely, as a sick child watches its nurse moving about its room. There was no reproach in their look, but they were still fixed on her, when she sat down again by his side.

"Veronica," said the faint, far voice, presently. "May I ask you one question, that I have no right to ask?"

"Anything," she answered. "And you have the right to ask anything."

"No--not this. Do you love another man?"

The still blue eyes widened, in earnestness.

"No, Gianluca. No--by the truth of G.o.d--no living man!"

"Nor one dead?" His tone sank almost to a whisper, and still his eyes were wide for her answer.

A faint and tender light came into her face, so faint, so far reflected from an infinite somewhere, that only such eyes as his could have seen it.

"There was Bosio," she said softly. "He spoke to me the night he died--I could have married him--I should have loved him--perhaps."

If the little phrases were broken, it was not by hesitation; it seemed rather as though what they meant must find each memory to have meaning, one by one, and word by word--and finding, wondered at what had once been true.

And Gianluca smiled, as he lay still, and the lids of his eyes closed peacefully and naturally, opening again with another look. He was too weak to be surprised by what he had only vaguely guessed, from some word she had let fall, but he knew well enough, from her voice and face, that she had never loved Bosio Macomer, nor any other man, dead or living.

And Hope, that is ever last to leave a breaking heart, nestled back into her own sweet place, breathing soft things of love, and life, and golden years to be.

"Thank you," he said. "I should not have asked you. It was kind to answer."

They did not speak again, and presently the door opened. The old Duca held it back with a stately bow, and the d.u.c.h.essa swept into the room with that sort of uncertain swaying motion, which is all that weakness leaves of grace. And the Duca shuffled in after her, and closed the door most precisely, for he was a precise old man.

"I thought it was time for tea, my dear," said the d.u.c.h.essa. "We have had such a good sleep!"

CHAPTER XXIV.

Though Gianluca had seemed to gain strength during the first week of his stay at Muro, he appeared to lose it even more rapidly after that memorable afternoon. It was not that he lost heart and control of courage; on the contrary, he spoke all at once more hopefully, and grew most particular in the carrying out of each detail of the day, precisely in the manner prescribed by the doctors. He forced himself to eat, he did his best to sleep a certain number of hours, he made Taquisara carry him out into the air and back again at fixed times, in order that the extreme regularity of his life might help his recovery if possible. But all this was of no use. It had seemed inconceivable that he should grow more thin, and yet his face and throat and hands shrunk day by day. He could not use his legs at all, now, and he told no one that he had hardly any sensation in them.

The d.u.c.h.essa prayed for her son, always in her own room and sometimes in the church, whither she went often alone in the afternoon, and sometimes accompanied by her husband. She even curtailed her daily siesta in order to have more time for prayer. No doubt, she would have given anything in the world for Gianluca, but she had very little else to give, beyond that sacrifice, which did not seem small or laughable to her. The Duca said little, but often shook his head, unexpectedly, and his weak eyes were watery. He sometimes walked twenty-five times round the top of the big lower bastion, under the vines that grew upon the trellis over it, before the midday breakfast, while the d.u.c.h.essa was at her devotions. At every round, when he came to the point fronting the valley he paused a moment and repeated very much the same words each time.