e is no one
in the whole world for whom I care as I do for you. I cannot imagine
anything that I could not do for your sake. But not love--not love. That
is something else. I do not know what it means. You could make me
understand anything but that. Oh--why must I say it, when it is so hard
to say?"

His face seemed cut, as a mask of pain, in alabaster, and the appealing,
hungry eyes waited for each fresh hurt.

"You made me think that you might love me," he said, the slow words
hardly forming themselves on his dry lips.

"Then God forgive me!" she cried, clasping her hands and bending her
face over them. "And yet--and yet I knew it. I felt it. I meant to tell
you, if you did not know! I only wished not to hurt you--it is so hard
to say."

"Yes," he answered, scarcely above his breath. "I see it is," he added,
after a long time.

As he lay in the deep chair, he turned his face from her, on the
cushion, till she could not see his eyes, and then was quite still. It
would have been easier if he had reproached her vehemently, if he had
turned and tried to win her again, and poured out his heart full of
love. But he lay there, like a dead angel, with his face turned from
her, hardly breathing.

"I have been cowardly, and base, and bad!" she cried, bending over her
clasped hands, and speaking to herself. "I should have said it--I said
it long ago, at Bianca's, and I should have said it again--but I was
afraid--afraid--oh! afraid!"

Her low voice trembled in anger against herself, in pity for him, in
sorrow for them both. She looked up and saw him still motionless. It
was as though she had killed him and were sitting beside his body. But
he still lived, and might live. For one instant she felt a mad impulse
to give him her life, to marry him, not loving him, to save him if she
could, to atone for what she had done. But a horrible under-thought told
her that it would be but gambling for her freedom with his existence,
and that if she did it, she should do it because she felt that he must
surely die. Even her simplicity seemed gone. She looked again; he had
not moved.

She threw herself upon her knees, beside his great chair, her clasped
hands on his thin shoulder, in a sort of agony of despair.

"Speak to me!" she cried. "Forgive me--say that I have not killed
you--Gianluca--dear!"

One shadowy hand of his was lifted, and touched hers. It was as cold as
though it had lain dead in the dew. She took it quickly and h