for I will give thee up to no one but God. And I am afraid of
Linda."

He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. He trusted the
courage of her love. She promised to be brave in order to be loved
always--far away in a white palace upon a hill above a blue sea. Then
with a timid, tentative eagerness she murmured--

"Where is it? Where? Tell me that, Giovanni."

He opened his mouth and remained silent--thunderstruck.

"Not that! Not that!" he gasped out, appalled at the spell of secrecy
that had kept him dumb before so many people falling upon his lips again
with unimpaired force. Not even to her. Not even to her. It was too
dangerous. "I forbid thee to ask," he cried at her, deadening cautiously
the anger of his voice.

He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the unlawful treasure
arose, standing by her side like a figure of silver, pitiless and
secret, with a finger on its pale lips. His soul died within him at the
vision of himself creeping in presently along the ravine, with the smell
of earth, of damp foliage in his nostrils--creeping in, determined in
a purpose that numbed his breast, and creeping out again loaded with
silver, with his ears alert to every sound. It must be done on this very
night--that work of a craven slave!

He stooped low, pressed the hem of her skirt to his lips, with a
muttered command--

"Tell him I would not stay," and was gone suddenly from her, silent,
without as much as a footfall in the dark night.

She sat still, her head resting indolently against the wall, and her
little feet in white stockings and black slippers crossed over each
other. Old Giorgio, coming out, did not seem to be surprised at the
intelligence as much as she had vaguely feared. For she was full of
inexplicable fear now--fear of everything and everybody except of her
Giovanni and his treasure. But that was incredible.

The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo's abrupt departure with a
sagacious indulgence. He remembered his own feelings, and exhibited a
masculine penetration of the true state of the case.

"Va bene. Let him go. Ha! ha! No matter how fair the woman, it galls a
little. Liberty, liberty. There's more than one kind! He has said
the great word, and son Gian' Battista is not tame." He seemed to be
instructing the motionless and scared Giselle. . . . "A man should not
be tame," he added, dogmatically out of the doorway. Her stillness and
silence seemed to displease him. "Do not g