e 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."

"If we meet again we can laugh at all this, Roma."

"Yes, we can laugh at all this," she faltered.

"If not ... Adieu