"I promise too--I promise that as long as I live, and wherever I am and whatever becomes of me, I will ... yes, because I cannot help it ... I will love you to the last."

Saying this in passionate tones, she drew down his head and he met her kiss with his lips.

"It is our marriage, David. Others are married in church and by the hand, and with a ring. We are married in our spirits and our souls."

A long time passed, during which they did not speak. The searchlight flashed in on them again and again with its supernatural eye, and as often as it did so Rossi looked at her with strange looks of pity and of love.

Meantime, she cut a lock from her hair, tied it with a piece of ribbon, and put it in his pocket with his watch. Then she dried her eyes with her handkerchief and pushed it in his breast.

The night went on, and nothing was to be heard but the chiming of clocks outside. At length through the silence there came a muffled rumble from the streets.

"You must go now," she said, and when the next flash came round she looked up at him with a steadfast gaze, as if trying to gather into her eyes her last memories of his face.

"Adieu!"

"Not yet."

"It is still dark, but the streets are patrolled and every gate is closed, and how are you to escape?"

"If the soldiers had wished to take me they could have done so a hundred times."

"But the city is stirring. Be careful for my sake. Adieu!"

"Roma," said Rossi, "if I do not take you with me it is partly because I want your help in Rome. Think of the poor people I leave behind me in poverty and in prison. Think of Elena when she awakes in the morning, alone with her terrible grief. Some one should be here to represent me for a time at all events--to take the messages I must send, the instructions I shall have to give. It will be a dangerous task, Roma, a task that can only be undertaken by some one who loves me, some one who...."

"That is enough. Tell me what I can do," she said.

They arranged a channel of correspondence, and then Roma began her farewells afresh.

"Roma," said Rossi again, "since I must go away before our civil marriage can be celebrated, is it not best that our spiritual one should have the blessing of the Church?"

Roma looked at him and trembled.

"When I am gone God knows what may happen. The Baron may be a free man any day, and he may put pressure on you to marry him. In that case it will be strength and courage to you to know that in God's eyes you are married already. It will be happiness and comfort to me, too, when I am far away from you and alone."

"But it is impossible."

"Not so. A declaration before a parish priest is all that is necessary.

'Father, this is my wife.' 'This is my husband.' That is enough. It will have no value in the eye of the law, but it will be a religious marriage for all that."

"There is no time. You cannot wait...."

"Hush!" The clocks were striking three. "At three o'clock there is mass at St. Andrea delle Frate. That is your parish church, Roma. The priest and his acolytes are the only witnesses we require."

"If you think ... that is to say ... if it will make you happy, and be a strength to me also...."

"Run for your cloak and hat, dearest--in ten minutes it will be done."

"But think again." She was breathing audibly. "Who knows what may happen before you return? Will you never repent?"

"Never!"

"But ... but there is something ... something I ought to tell you--something painful. It is about the past."

"The past is past. Let us think of the future."

"You do not wish to hear it."

"If it is painful to you--no!"

"Will nothing and nobody divide us?"

"Nothing and nobody in the world."

She gulped down another choking sob and threw both arms about his neck.

"Take me, then. I am your wife before God and man."

XIII

It was still dark overhead, and the streets with their thin covering of snow were as silent as a catacomb. Through the door of the church, when the leather covering was lifted, there came the yellow light of the candles burning on the altar. The priest in his gold vestments stood with his face to the glistening shrine, and his acolytes knelt beside him. There was only one worshipper, an old woman who was kneeling before a chair in the gloom of a side chapel. The tinkle of the acolytes' bell and the faint murmur of the priest's voice were the only sounds that broke the stillness.

Rossi and Roma stepped up on tiptoe, and as the Father finished his mass and turned to go they made their declaration. The old man was startled and disturbed, but the priest commits no crime who listens to the voice of conscience, and he took their names and gave them his blessing. They parted at the church door.

"You will write when you cross the frontier?"

"Yes."

"Adieu then, until we meet again!"

"If I am long away from you, Roma...."

"You cannot be long away. You will be with me every day and always."

She was assuming a lively tone to keep up his courage, but there was a dry glitter in her eyes and a tremor in her voice.

He took her full, round form in his arms for a last embrace. "If the result of this night's work is that I am arrested and brought back and imprisoned...."

"I can wait for you," she said.

"If I am banished for life...."

"I can follow you."

"If the worst comes to the worst, and one way or another death itself should be the fate that falls to me...."

"I can follow you there, too."