"Have pity upon me."

"Did you denounce me to the magistrate?"

"Yes."

His pale face became ashen.

"Then it's true," he said in a voice that hardly passed his throat.

"What my friends have been saying all along is true. They warned me against you from the first, but I wouldn't believe them. I was a fool, and _this_ is my reward."

So saying he crushed the warrant in his hand and flung it at her feet.

Roma could bear no more. Making a great call on her resolution, she rose, turned towards the bedroom door, and, speaking in a loud voice in order that he who was within might hear, she said:

"David, I don't want to excuse myself or to blame anybody else, whoever it may be, and however wickedly he may have acted. But, from my soul and before God, I tell you that if I denounced you I did it for the best."

"The best!"

He laughed bitterly, but she forced herself to go on.

"When you went away you warned me that your enemies could be merciless.

They _have_ been merciless. First, they tempted me with the fear of poverty. I had been accustomed to wealth, comfort, luxury. Look round you, David--they are gone. Did I ever regret them? Never! I was rich enough in your love, and I would not have sacrificed that for a queen's crown."

She looked up at his tortured face and saw that it was full of scorn, but still she struggled on.

"Then they tempted me with jealousy. The forged letter which killed Bruno was intended to poison me. Did I believe it? No! I knew you loved me, and if you didn't, if you had deceived me, that made no difference.

_I_ loved _you_, and even if I lost you I should always love you, whatever happened."

Again she looked up into his face with her glistening eyes. It was not anger she saw there now, but an expression of bewilderment and of pain.

"Last of all, they tempted me with love itself. The treacherous tyrants deceived and intimidated the Pope--the good and saintly Pope--and through him they told me that your arrest was certain, your life in danger, and nothing could save you from your present peril but that I should denounce you for your past offences. The phantom of conspiracy rose up before me, and I remembered my father, doomed to life-long exile and a lonely death. It was my dark hour, dearest, and when they promised me--faithfully promised me--that your life should be spared...."

A faint sound came from the bedroom. Roma heard it, but Rossi, in the tumult of his emotion, heard nothing.

"I know what you will say, dear--that you would have given your life a hundred times rather than save it at the loss of all you hold so dear.

But I am no heroine, David. I am only a woman who loves you, and I could not see you die."

He felt his soul swell with love and forgiveness, and he wanted to sob like a child, but Roma went on, and without trying to keep back her tears.

"That's all, dear. Now you know everything. It is not your fault that the love you have brought home to me is dead. I hoped that before you came home I might die too. I think my soul must be dead already. I do not hope for pardon, but if your great heart _could_ pardon me...."

"Roma," said Rossi at last, while tears filled his eyes and choked his voice, "when I escaped from the police I came here to avenge myself; but if you say it was your love that led you to denounce me...."

"I do say so."

"Your love, and nothing but your love...."

"Nothing! Nothing!"

"Though I am betrayed and fallen, and may be banished or condemned to death, yet...."

Her heart swelled and throbbed. She held out her arms to him.

"David!" she cried, and at the next moment she was clasped to his breast.

Again there was a faint sound from the adjoining room.

"The woman lies," said a voice behind them.

The Baron stood in the bedroom door.

VII

The Baron's impulse on going into the bedroom had been merely to escape from one who must be a runaway prisoner, and therefore little better than a madman, whose worst madness would be provoked by his own presence; but when he realised that Rossi was self-possessed, and even magnanimous in his hour of peril, the Baron felt ashamed of his hiding-place, and felt compelled to come out. In spite of his pride he had been forced to overhear the conversation, and he was humiliated by the generosity of the betrayed man, but what humbled him most was the clear note of the woman's love.

Knight of the Annunziata! Cousin of the King! President of the Council!

Dictator! These things had meant something to him an hour ago. What were they now?

The agony of the Baron's jealousy was intolerable. For the first time in his life his ideas, usually so clear and exact, became confused. Roma was lost to him. He was going mad.

He looked at the revolver which he had snatched up when Roma let it fall, examined it, made sure it was loaded, cocked it, put it in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat, and then opened the door.

The two in the other room did not at first see him. He spoke, and their arms slackened and they stood apart.

After a moment of silence Rossi spoke. "Roma," he said, "what is this gentleman doing here?"

The Baron laughed. "Wouldn't it be more reasonable to ask what you are doing here, sir?" he asked.

Then trying to put into logical sequence the confused ideas which were besieging his tormented brain, he said, "I understand that this apartment belongs now to the lady; the lady belongs to me, and when she denounced you to the police it was merely in fulfilment of a plan we concocted together on the day you insulted both of us in your speech in the piazza."

Rossi made a step forward with a threatening gesture, but Roma intervened. The Baron gripped firmly the revolver in his pocket, and said:

"Take care, sir. If a man threatens me he must be prepared for the consequences. The lady knows what those consequences may be."

Rossi, breathing heavily, was trying to retain the mastery of himself.

"If you tell me that the lady...."

"I tell you that according to the law of nature and of reason the lady is my wife."

"It's a lie."

"Ask her."

"And so I will."

Roma saw the look of triumph with which Rossi turned to her. The terrible moment she had lived in fear of had come to pass. The letters she had written to Rossi had not yet reached him, and her enemy was telling his story before she had told hers.