o her
heart. "How good you are to me! Don't think I don't realise it--your
unselfishness.... You think only of me--and I can't think of anything
but my boy ... of how frightened and wretched he must be.... It's not
that my love for you is any less than my love for him ... but he's so
little ... he's my only son ... he needs me so...."

Amaldi felt like crying out, "And do I not need you?" but he choked down
this cry. What meaning had the love of lovers for Rachel mourning her
children? He drew her to him and kissed her loosened hair very gently.

"This is Bobby's hour," he said. "I can wait for my hour."

He left not long after, so that the servants might have no cause to
gossip. It had been decided between them that he would attend to
everything for her and that she and Rosa would be ready to leave by the
morning train.

"I will send men to fetch your boxes at nine," he said. "Your maid can
go with them. I will take you to the station myself."

"Thank you ... thank you, dearest...." she said.

Suddenly he caught her in his arms as on the day before in the Villa
garden.

"Don't forget that you are the blood of my soul...." he said in a
strangled voice.

She sobbed out his name--put up her arms about his neck. He kissed her
rather wildly and went without another word.

That strange phrase of his rang in her mind all night, mingled with her
frantic, confused thoughts of Bobby--and anguish of dread about what
Lady Wychcote might say and do before Mr. Surtees could hear the true
facts.

Amaldi had spoken in Italian as he nearly always did in moments of great
feeling. She could hear his choked voice saying those strange, intense
words ... "_sei il sangue del anima mia_"--the blood of his soul ... she
was that to him. And yet, as she lay on the bed that Bobby had shared
with her only last night, she felt as if her son were the true blood of
her own soul ... that if she lost him by any dreadful, unspeakable
chance--her soul would bleed away ... there would be no love left in her
for any one.... And she began to reproach herself bitterly through the
endless, sleepless night. She had been wrapped up in her own life ...
she had not thought as she should of the precious little life derived
from hers.... She should have foreseen. Knowing Lady Wychcote as she
knew her, she ought to have had such a possibility as this that had
happened always before her.

Then again she would think of Amaldi with a throb of pain and yea