I wish to go. I should like to go immediately."

"I'll tell him," said the doctor, and he went out to hide his emotion.

The Major came to the open arch of the loggia. He stood there for a
moment, and there was somebody behind him. Then the Major disappeared,
but the other remained. It was David Rossi. He was standing like a man
transfixed, looking in speechless dismay at Roma's pallid face with the
light of heaven on it.

Roma did not see Rossi, and Elena, who did, was too frightened to speak.
Lying back in her bed-chair with a great happiness in her eyes, she
said:

"Sister, if he should come here when I am gone ... no, I don't mean
that ... but if you should see him and he should ask about me, you will
say that I went away quite cheerfully. Tell him I was always thinking
about him. No, don't say that either. But he must never think I
regretted what I did, or that I died broken-hearted. Say farewell for
me, Elena. _Addio Carissima!_ That's his word, you know. _Addio
Carissimo!_"

Rossi, blinded with his tears, took a step into the loggia, and in a low
voice, very soft and tremulous, as if trying not to startle her, he
cried:

"Roma!"

She raised herself, turned, saw him, and rose to her feet. Without a
word he opened his arms to her, and with a little frightened cry she
fell into them and was folded to his breast.

[Illustration: WITH A FRIGHTENED CRY, SHE WAS FOLDED TO HIS BREAST.]

IX

It was ten days later. Rossi had surrendered to Parliament, but
Parliament had declined to order his arrest. Then he had called for the
liberation of Roma, but Roma had neither been liberated nor removed. "It
will not be necessary," was the report of the doctor at the Castle to
the officers of the Prefetura. The great liberator and remover was on
his way.

At Rossi's request Dr. Fedi had been called in, and he had diagnosed the
case exactly. Roma was suffering from an internal disease, which was
probably hereditary, but certainly incurable. Strain and anxiety had
developed it earlier in life than usual, but in any case it must have
come.

At first Rossi rebelled with all his soul and strength. To go through
this long and fierce fight with life, and to come out victorious, and
then, when all seemed to promise peace and a kind of tempered happiness,
to be met by Death--the unconquerable, the inevitable--it was terrible,
it was awful!

He called in specialists; talked of a change of ai