I will never see him again?"

"You are the master."

She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her expression did not
change in the least. Marcello moved and sat up opposite to her, clasping
his hands round his knees. He was very thin, but the colour was already
coming back to his face, and his eyes did not look tired.

"Listen to me," he said. "You must put this idea out of your head. It
was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for you. He arranged
everything. It was he who got you Settimia. He did everything to make
you comfortable, and he has never disturbed us once when we have been
together. He never so much as asked where I was going when I used to go
down to see you every afternoon. No friend could have done more."

"I know it," Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone
which he could not understand.

"Then why do you say that he means to separate us?"

Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello's
long and lovingly. She knew something that he did not know, and which
had haunted her long. When Folco had come to the bedside in the
hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing
fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers. It
had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it. A child would
have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a
mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her
when she thought of it. Folco had not looked as men do who see one they
love called back from almost certain death.

"What are you thinking?" Marcello asked, for her deep look stirred his
blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the world except the
beautiful creature that sat there, within his reach, in the lonely
pine-woods.

She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she saw the
quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted white, the smooth
pillow, Marcello's emaciated head, and Corbario's face.

"I was thinking how you looked when you were ill," she answered simply.

The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had been weaving
itself out of her dark eyes. Marcello drew a short, impatient breath and
threw himself on his side again, supporting his head on his hand and
looking down at the brown pine-needles.

"You do not know Folco," he said discontentedly. "I don't know why you
should dislike him."

"I will tell you something,