Chapter 6

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_ CHAPTER VI

Bosio shook his head, and a long silence followed. Once or twice he roused himself, stirred the cup of chocolate which the waiter had set before him, and sipped a teaspoonful of it absently. The corner where the two men sat together was quiet, but from the front of the cafe came the continual clatter of plates and glasses, the echo of feet, and the ring of voices; for it was just midday, and the place was full of its habitual frequenters.

"If we were in church," said Bosio at last, "and if you were in a confessional--"

He stopped, and glanced at his companion without completing the sentence.

"You would make a confession? There are churches near," said Don Teodoro. "I am ready. Will you come?"

Bosio hesitated.

"No," he said at last. "I could tell you nothing without betraying others."

"Betraying! Is it a crime that you have on your conscience?" The priest's voice was low and troubled.

"Many crimes," answered Bosio. "The crimes that must come, and that I cannot prevent by living, nor hinder by dying."

Again there was silence during several minutes.

"You may trust me as a friend, even if, as a priest, you could not confess all the circumstances to me," said Don Teodoro, after the long pause. "I do not wish you to make confidences to me, unless you are impelled to do so. But you are in that frame of mind, my dear Bosio, in which a man will sooner or later unburden himself to some one. You might do worse than choose me. I am your friend, I am old, and I know that I am discreet. I am extraordinarily discreet. It may seem strange that I should say so myself, but my own life has taught me that I am to be trusted with secrets."

"Yes," replied Bosio. "You must have heard strange things sometimes under the seal of confession."

"I have known of strange things." Don Teodoro's face grew sad and thoughtful, and Bosio, seeing it, suddenly made up his mind.

He leaned far back against the painted wall for a moment, with half-closed eyes. Then he drew nearer to his friend, so that he spoke close to the latter's ear, though he looked down at the table before him. His nervous fingers played with the teaspoon in the saucer of his cup.

It was a strange confession, there in the corner of the crowded cafe at midday, and those who glanced idly at the two men from a distance would hardly have guessed that an act in a mysterious life was before their eyes--an act which was itself but a verbal recapitulation of many actions past, but which to the speaker had an enormous importance of its own, and an influence on the future of all concerned.

Not much had been needed to break through the barrier of Bosio's reticence. Walking through the streets that morning he had for a moment even thought of telling some of his story to Taquisara. It was far easier to tell it to the only true friend he had in the world, to one in whom he had confided as a boy and had trusted as a young man. He told almost all. He confessed that his love of many years had been his brother's wife, and though he spoke no word of her love for him, the old priest knew the evil truth from the man's tone and look. For the rest he spared neither Matilde nor any one else, but told Don Teodoro all the truth, and all his anxious fears for Veronica's safety, if he should not marry her, with all his horror of his own shame if he should yield to the pressure brought upon him.

Don Teodoro's expression changed more than once while he listened, but he never turned his head nor moved in his seat.

"You see what I am," said Bosio, at last. "You see what my people are. Indeed, I need a confessor, if one could save my soul; but I need a friend even more, for through me that poor girl is in danger of her life. That is her choice--to die or to be my wife. Mine is, to see her murdered or to do an unutterably shameful thing--or to see the woman I love driven out of the world with infamy for the crimes she has not committed, and the fear of that disgrace is making her mad. It is for her, and for Veronica! What do I care about myself? What have I left to care for? What I have done, I have done. I am not good, I am not religious, I am perhaps a worse sinner than most men, and a poorer believer than many. But I will not be the instrument of these deeds--and yet, if I refuse--there is death, or shame, or both, to those I love! At least I have spoken, and you will not betray me. It has been a relief, a moment's respite from torture. I thank you for it, my friend, and I wish I could repay you. You cannot give me advice, for I have twisted and turned it all in fifty ways, and there is no escape. You cannot help me, for no one can. But you have done me some little momentary good, just by sitting there and hearing my story. Beyond that there is nothing to be done."

The wretched man closed his eyes, and again leaned back against the bright red wall, which threw his white face and dark-ringed eyes into strong and painful relief. Don Teodoro was silent, bending his mind upon the hideous problem. Bosio misunderstood him and spoke again without moving.

"I know," he said. "You need not speak. I know by heart all the reproaches I deserve, and I know that no human being, much less a holy man like yourself, could possibly feel anything but horror at all this--"

"I am very far from being a holy man," interrupted the priest. "If I feel horror, it is for what has been, and may be, but not for you. Bosio--" he hesitated a moment. "Will you come with me to Muro, and leave all this?" he asked suddenly. "Will you come out of the world for a while? No--I am not proposing to you to make a religious retreat. I wish I could. I know the world, and you, and your people, for I lived long among you, and I know that one cannot change one's soul, as one changes one's coat--nor enter upon a retreat as one springs into the sea for a bath in hot weather. What you have made yourself, you are. Heaven itself would need time to unmake you. I speak just as one man to another. Come with me to the mountains for a week, a month--as long as you will. It is dreary and cold, and you will have to eat what you can get; but you will have peace, for nobody will come up there to disturb you. Meanwhile, something may happen. You are overwrought by all you have seen and heard and felt. Whatever the countess may have said, Donna Veronica is quite safe. My dear Bosio, people in your rank of life do not murder one another for money nowadays. It is laughable, the mere idea of it--"

"Laughable!" Bosio turned and looked at him. "If you had seen her eyes, you would find it hard to laugh, I think. Such things happen rarely, perhaps, but they happen sometimes."

Don Teodoro was not persuaded. He thought that Bosio, in his excited state, very much overestimated the danger.

"At all events," he said, "nothing will happen, so long as there is the possibility that you may marry her. If you come with me, you will at least have time to think before acting. But here, you may be forced to act before you have been able to think."

But Bosio shook his head slowly.

"There are difficulties which can be helped by putting them off," he answered. "This is not one. You forget that in just three weeks my brother will be ruined--absolutely ruined--if he cannot pay. If I stayed that time with you, I should come back to find him a beggar--or obliged to throw himself upon Veronica's mercy and charity for his daily bread and for a roof to cover him."

"There is one other way," said the priest, thoughtfully. "There is one thing left for you to do, if you have courage to do it. And you know better than I what chance there would be of success. It is what I should do myself. It is a heroic remedy, but it may save everything yet."

Bosio's eyes turned anxiously to his friend, by way of question.

"Find Veronica alone," said Don Teodoro. "Take all rights into your own hands and tell her everything, just as you have told me. You know her well. If she is kind-hearted, as I think she is, she will pay your brother's debts, take over the estates herself, since it is time, and manage that Cardinal Campodonico shall never suspect that there has been anything wrong with the administration. If she is not so charitable as to do that of her own free will, why then, since you believe it, tell her that she must do it to save her life. It is most unlikely that she will refuse and take refuge with the cardinal in order to bring public disgrace upon her father's sister. And even that, horrible as it seems to you--if it must be, it will be, and it will not be your fault--"

"But Matilde--" Bosio began in troubled tones. "And yet, perhaps, it is possible. Veronica would not be so cruel as to ruin them--the money is nothing to her. And, after all, she will hardly feel the loss out of her immense fortune. Yes--" his face brightened slowly with the rays of hope. "Yes--it may be possible, after all. I had thought of going to her, but not of telling her the whole truth. It did not seem as though I could, until I had heard myself tell it to you. It will be hard, but it seems possible, and it will save her--and then--"

His face changed again, as he broke off in the sentence, and his melancholy eyes turned slowly to his friend.

"And then," said Don Teodoro, "perhaps you will go back with me to Muro, and rest and forget it all."

"Yes," answered Bosio, sadly and dreamily, "perhaps I shall go to Muro with you. I wonder," he continued, after a short pause, "that you should want such a man as I am in your priest's house there."

"Oh! I am glad of a little society when I can get it, and I have much to show you which might interest you. I have worked perpetually for many years, since we used to talk about my history of the Church."

He checked himself. In spite of all he had just heard, and the real distress and sympathy he had felt for Bosio, the one of his dominant passions which was uppermost just then had almost made him forget everything, and launch into an account of his work and studies. Men who, intellectually, are deeply engrossed in one matter, and who, socially, have long lived very lonely lives, are not generally able to lose themselves in sympathy for others. As Bosio was not exactly an object for Don Teodoro's charity, he was in some danger of being made a listener for the outpouring of the priest's tremendous intellectual enthusiasm. But the latter checked himself. The things he had heard were indeed of a nature not so easily forgotten. He went back to them at once.

"My dear Bosio," he began again, "do not put yourself down as the worst of men. It is just as bad to go too far in one direction as in the other. There is undoubtedly, in theory, the man in the world, at any given moment, who must be a little worse than any other living man; but though he might be our next-door neighbour, we have no means whatever of knowing that he is the greatest sinner alive, because we do not know all about all existing sinners. Consequently, and for the same reason, no man has any right to assume that he is worst of men. And as far as that goes, many men have done worse things, even in the religious view, than you have done, and very much worse things, in the opinion of society. You are not responsible for all that the others have done. You are only responsible in the immediate future for your share of duty, in doing the wisest and best thing which may present itself. And if you can induce Donna Veronica to forgive your brother and your brother's wife, by telling her the truth without prevarication, you will have done something to atone for the past evil which, you cannot undo. I am not preaching to you, my dear friend. Pray look upon me as a man and not as a priest. Indeed, I would rather that you should never think of me as a priest at all. If you need spiritual help, there are many better men than I, who can give it to you. But as a man and a friend, come to me if you will. You are to me also a man and a friend, and not a penitent."

He finished speaking, took off his spectacles, and rested his head against the wall behind him, as Bosio had done, and the younger man glanced sideways at his friend's extraordinary profile. Its fantastic outline had a moral effect upon him; for it recalled, as nothing else could, the early days of his life before he had been what he now was, when he had known what hope meant, and had understood aspirations in others which had no meaning for him now. He was very grateful, too, for Don Teodoro's words, which certainly comforted him in a way he had not expected.

"Thank you," he said, "I will think of it. I think I shall take your advice and speak to Veronica. She can save us all, if she will."

"Yes," said Don Teodoro. "She can save you all--and she will."

Then they sat a long time in silence in their corner, and the priest's mind wandered occasionally to the thought of his manuscript, and of the many points he intended to discuss with his friend Don Matteo, a man as learned as himself, but indolent instead of active, one of those passive, living treasuries of thought upon which the active worker fastens greedily when he has a chance, to extract all the riches he can in the shortest possible time, in any shape, to carry the gold away with him to his workshop and fashion it to his wish.

And Bosio, whose intelligence was essentially dramatic and given to throwing future interviews into an imaginary dramatic shape, thought over and over what he would say to Veronica and what she might be expected to say to him. But he was terribly exhausted and harassed, and by degrees as the stimulant of recent comfort lost its cheering warmth within him, he silently grew despondent again within himself, and his dramatic fancies of fear became near and tragic realities. He thought he could hear the clear, bell-like voice of the somnambulist telling him that he should be forced to marry Veronica.

At last, realizing that he was probably detaining Don Teodoro, he roused himself, and the two went out together into the broad light of the Piazza San Ferdinando.

"I will go home," Bosio said. "I will think of it all. At this time I can easily be alone with Veronica."

His voice sounded as though he were speaking to himself, and his head was bent, so that he stooped from the neck as Don Teodoro did. But the latter, as he walked, his silver-rimmed spectacles balanced on his great nose, thrust his bent head more forward. Or rather, it was as though his head moved first in the direction he meant to follow, while his thin legs had difficulty in keeping up with it.

Bosio was willing to put off the moment of going home as long as possible, and he accompanied his friend to the door of Don Matteo's lodging, which was in a clean, quiet, sunlit street, behind the Piazza--in one of those oases of light and cleanliness upon which one sometimes comes in the heart of Naples. The little green door was reached by a couple of steps up from the level of the street. Don Teodoro had a key and stood on the upper step, holding it in his hand and blinking in the warm sunshine.

"You know this house," he said. "You have been to see me here once or twice. If you want me, you can always send for me in the afternoon, for I only go out in the morning. But I will come and see you. When? To-morrow, before noon?"

"Yes," Bosio answered. "By to-morrow at midday something will be decided."

They shook hands and parted, Bosio turning eastward in the direction of his home. The priest absently tried to insert the key in the lock of the door, while his eyes followed his friend to the corner of the street. Then, as Bosio's still graceful figure disappeared, he turned from the keyhole with a sigh, and let himself in.

Bosio walked rapidly at first, and then more slowly as he came nearer to the old quarter in which the Palazzo Macomer was situated. As with all men of such character, his irresolution increased just when he fancied that he was about to do something decisive. He would not have hesitated in the same way, if he had been called upon to face a physical danger; for though he was certainly no hero, he was by no means a physical coward, and in a quarrel he would have stood up bravely enough to face his antagonist. But this was very different. He had been ruled by Matilde Macomer through many years, and when he thought of meeting her he had a deadly presentiment of assured defeat. She would extract from him something more than the silent assent which he had been forced into giving on the previous evening, and she could not let him go till he promised to marry Veronica. He walked more slowly, as he felt the fear and uncertainty twisting his scant courage from his heart.

Then he was ashamed of himself, and in a sudden attempt to be brave he hailed a passing cab and drove rapidly to the Palazzo Macomer. He asked for Veronica and was told that she was in her room. He did not wish to send her a message. Gregorio had gone out immediately after the midday breakfast. Bosio was glad of that. He had not seen his brother since the previous evening, and he did not wish to see him alone. There were monstrous wrongs on both sides, and it was better to pretend mutual ignorance, and keep up the ghastly farce, pretending that nothing was the matter. The very smallest incautious word would crack the swaying bubble that was blown to bursting with hell's breath.

Bosio had entered the main apartments in order to inquire for Veronica, had passed through the long outer hall with its red walls, its matted floor and its great table covered with green baize, to the antechamber within, where, with some ostentation, as Bosio had always thought, Gregorio had hung up the escutcheon with the quartered arms of Macomer and Serra, flanked by half a dozen big old family portraits on either side, opposite the three windows. He had waited there until the footman returned after looking for Veronica in the drawing-room, and when he heard that she was not there, he turned to reach the staircase again and go up to his own bachelor's quarters, for he feared to meet Matilde and hoped to put off seeing her until dinner-time, when he might so manoeuvre as not to be left alone with her.

But the footman had hardly delivered his answer, and Bosio was in the act of turning, when one of the two masked doors under the pictures opened suddenly, and Matilde spoke into the room, calling him by name. He turned pale and stopped short, as though a cold hand had taken him by the throat. The footman went out to the hall, as Bosio met Matilde's eyes.

"Come," she said briefly, "I want to speak to you."

He obeyed silently, and followed her through the narrow door and through a passage beyond, to her own morning-room. Matilde shut the door. The afternoon sun streamed in through two high windows, filling every corner with light and turning the crimson carpet blood red, where Matilde stood, all round her feet and the folds of her loose dark gown, so that she seemed to rise out of a pool of vivid colour, a dark, strong figure with the brightness all behind her and the gleam of her eyes just lightening in the shadow of her face.

"Why did you go out without seeing me this morning?" she asked in a hard tone. "And why did Taquisara come to see you early? You scarcely know him--"

"I certainly did not send for him," said Bosio, uneasily.

"He did not come for nothing," retorted Matilde. "He is no friend of yours. He must have come for some particular reason."

Bosio said nothing, but turned from her and moved towards a table covered with books. In an objectless way he opened a volume and looked at the title page. Matilde followed him with her eyes.

"Well?" she said presently, "I am waiting. What did Taquisara have to say? He is Gianluca's friend--he came with a message. That is clear. What did he say? I am waiting to hear."

"He came because he chose to come," answered Bosio, still looking at the title page of the book. "Gianluca did not send him. He wished to know whether it were true that I was to marry Veronica."

"I thought so. And what did you answer? Of course you told him that it was quite settled."

"We had a long conversation--I do not remember all that we said--"

"You do not remember whether you told him that you were to marry Veronica or not?" Matilde laughed angrily and came forward.

"Let that book alone!" she said imperiously. "Look at me--so--now tell me the truth!"

She laid her hand upon his arm, and not gently, and she made him turn to her. Bosio felt that shock of shame which smites a man in the back, as it were, when a woman is too strong for him and orders him brutally to do her will.

"I told him the truth," he answered, and his pale cheeks reddened with futile anger.

"The truth!" Matilde's face darkened. "What? What did you tell him?"

Bosio was weakly glad to have frightened her a little.

"The truth," he said, trying to assume a certain indifference. "Just that. I let him understand that nothing is definitely settled yet, and that there is no contract--"

Matilde was silent, and her eyes seemed to draw nearer together, while the smooth red lips curled scornfully.

"Oh, what a coward you are!" she cried in a low voice, in deep disgust, and as she spoke she dropped his arm in contempt, though she still held his face with her angry gaze.

"You have no right to call me a coward," answered Bosio, defending his manhood. "I told you that I could not do it. The man put it in such a way that I had to give him a definite answer. For your sake I would not deny the engagement altogether--"

"For my sake!" exclaimed Matilde. "Do not use such phrases to me. They mean nothing. For some wretched quibble of your miserable conscience--as you still have the assumption to call it--you will ruin us in another day."

"Yes, I still have some conscience," replied Bosio, trying to be bold under her scornful eyes. "I would not let Taquisara think that you and Gregorio had lied, and I would not lie myself--"

"You are reforming, then? You choose the moment well!"

"I have told you what passed between Taquisara and me," said Bosio. "That was what you wished to know. I will judge of myself whether I did right or not."

He turned from her and walked away, towards the door.

"Well?" she said, not moving, for she knew that her voice would stop him.

"Is there anything else?" he asked, turning again and standing still.

"There is much more. Come back! Sit down and talk to me like a sensible being. There is much to be said. The matter is all but settled in spite of the account which Taquisara frightened you into giving him. I like that man, he is so brave! He is not at all like you."

"If you wish me to stay longer, you must not insult me again," said Bosio, not yet seating himself, but resting his hands on the back of a chair as he stood. "You know very well that I am no more a coward, if it comes to fighting men, than others are. One need not be cowardly to dread doing such a thing as you are trying to force me to."

"It does not seem such a very terrible thing," said Matilde, her tone suddenly changing and growing thoughtful. "It really does not seem to me such a dreadful thing that you should be Veronica's husband. Of course I do not speak of the material advantages. You were always an idealist, Bosio--you do not care for those things, and I daresay that when you are married you will not even care to take her titles, nor to spend much of her money. I know well enough what passes in your mind. Sit down. Let us talk about it. We cannot afford to quarrel, you and I, can we? I am sorry I spoke as I did--and I never meant that you were cowardly in the ordinary sense. I was angry about Taquisara. What right had he to come here, to pry into our affairs? I should think you would have resented it, too."

"I did," said Bosio, somewhat sullenly. "But I could not turn him out, nor get into a quarrel with him. It would have made a useless scandal and would have set every one talking."

"Certainly," assented Matilde. "Perhaps you did right, after all--at least, you thought you did. I am sure of that. I do not know why I was so angry at you. I am unstrung, and nervous, I suppose. Did I say very dreadful things to you, dear? I do not know what I said--"

"You called me a coward several times," replied Bosio, thinking to show a little strength by relenting slowly.

"Oh! but I did not mean it!" cried the countess. "Bosio, forgive me. I did not mean to say such things--indeed, I did not. But do you wonder that I am nervous? Say that you forgive me--"

"Of course I forgive you," answered Bosio, raising his eyebrows rather wearily. "I know that you are under a terrible strain--but you say things sometimes which are unjust and hard. I know what all this means to us both--but there must be some other way."

Matilde shook her head mournfully, as Bosio sat down beside her, already sinking back to his long-learned docility.

"There is no other way," she said. "There is certainly none, that is sure. I have thought it all over, as one thinks of everything when everything is in danger. The only other course is to throw ourselves upon Veronica's mercy--"

"Well? Why not?" asked Bosio, eagerly, as Don Teodoro's advice gained instant plausibility again. "She is kind, she is charitable, she will forgive everything and save you--"

"The shame of it, Bosio! Of confessing it all--and she may refuse. Veronica is not all kindness and charity. She is a Serra, as I am, and though she is a mere girl, if she takes it into her head to be hard and unforgiving, there would be no power on earth that could move her. She is not so unlike me, Bosio. You may think so because she is so unlike me in looks. She has the type of her father, poor Tommaso. But we Serra are all Serra--there is not much difference. No--do not interrupt me, dear. And as for your marriage, there is much to be said for it. It is time that you were married, you know. You and I have lived our lives, and we are not what we were. I shall always be fond of you--we shall always be more than friends--but always less than what we have been. It must have come sooner or later, Bosio, and it may as well come now. You know--we cannot be always young. And as for me, if I am not already old, I soon shall be."

The woman who had held him so long knew how to tempt him, sacrificing everything in the desperate straits to which she was reduced. Though he had loved her well, and sinfully, but truly, for so many years, his love had sometimes seemed an unbearable thraldom, to escape from which he would have given his heart piecemeal, though he should lose all the happiness life held for him, for the sake of a momentary freedom. Possibly, too, she knew that he never longed for that freedom so much as when she had just been most violent and despotic. She was prepared for the feeble dissent with which he answered her suggestion of separation. He would be the more easily persuaded to yield and marry Veronica.

"As for your being old," he said, "it is absurd. It is I who have grown old of late. But our being friends--" he paused thoughtfully.

"A man is never too old to marry," answered Matilde. "It is only women who grow too old to be loved. You will begin your life all over again with Veronica. You and she will go away together--you can live in Rome, when you are tired of Paris. It will be better. You and I will see each other seldom at first. By and by it will be so easy for us to be good friends after we have been separated some time."

"Friends?" Bosio spoke the one word again, with a sad and dreamy intonation.

"I asked Veronica this morning," continued Matilde, not heeding him, and beginning to speak more rapidly. "You have no idea how very fond she is of you. When I spoke of the marriage, she seemed to think it the most natural thing in the world. She found arguments for it herself."

"She?"

"Yes. She said--what I have said to you--that there was no man whom she knew so well and liked so much as you, that of course she had never thought of marrying you, nor, indeed, of being married at all, but that, at the same time, she should think that you would make a very good husband. She wished to think of it--that is as much as to say that she will not even make any serious objections. You have no idea how young girls feel about marriage, Bosio. How should you? You cannot comprehend the horror a girl like Veronica feels of a stranger, of a man like Gianluca, even, whom she has met half a dozen times and talked with. It seems so dreadful to think of spending a lifetime with a man about whom she knows nothing, or next to nothing. And yet it is the custom, and most of them accept it and are happy. But the idea of marrying some one with whom she is really intimate, whom she really likes, who really understands her, places marriage in a new light for a young girl. Without knowing it, Veronica is half in love with you. It is no wonder that she likes the thought of being your wife--apart from the fact that you are a very desirable husband."

"I cannot believe that," said Bosio.

"That you are desirable as a husband? My dear Bosio, do not pretend to be so absurdly modest! Any woman would be glad to marry you. But for me, you could have made the best match in Naples years ago--"

"Not even years ago. Much less now. But that was not what I meant. I cannot believe that Veronica is really inclined to marry me. It seems to me that she might be my daughter--"

"If you had been married at fifteen," suggested Matilde, laughing softly. "Because you feel tired and harassed to-day, you feel a hundred years old. It is no compliment to me to say so, for I am even a little older than you, I think. And you--you are young, you are handsome, you are talented, you have the manners that women love--"

"It is not many minutes since you were saying that we were both growing old--"

"No, no! I said that we could not always be young. That is very different. And that we have lived our lives--our lives so long as they can be lived together--that is what I meant. You are young! How many men marry at fifty! And you are not forty yet. You have ten years of youth before you. That is not the question. So far as that is concerned, say that you are old to-night, at dinner, and you shall see how Veronica will laugh at you! But that you and I should part, Bosio--and yet, it is far better, if you have the courage."

"Have you?" he asked sadly.

"Yes--I have, for your sake, since I see how you look at this. And you are right. I know you are, though I am only a woman, and cannot have a man's ideas about honour. For my own part--well, I am a woman, and I have loved you long. But you are the one to be thought of. You shall be free, as though I had never lived. You shall be able to say to yourself that in marrying Veronica you are not doing anything in the least dishonourable. I shall not exist for you. I shall not feel that I have the right to think of you and for you as I always have. I shall never ask you to do anything for me, lest you should feel that I were asserting some claim to you, as though you were still mine. It will be hard at first. But I can do it, and I will do it, in order that your conscience may be free. You shall marry her, as though you had never known me, and hereafter I will always be the same. Only--" She fixed her eyes upon him with a look which, whether genuine or assumed, was fierce and tender--

"Only--if you are not true to her, Bosio--if you leave her and go after some other woman--then I will turn upon you!"

Bosio met her glance with a look of something like astonishment, wondering how in a few sentences she had got herself into a position to threaten him with vengeance if he were unfaithful to Veronica.

"We will not speak of that," she exclaimed before he said anything in answer or protest. "We have harder things to do than to imagine evil in the future. Since we are decided--since it is to be the end--let it be now, quickly! You shall not have it on your mind that you belong to me in any way, from now. No--you are right--you must feel free. You must feel free, besides really being free. You must feel, when you speak to Veronica to-night or to-morrow, as she expects you to speak, that all our life together is utterly past and swept away, and that I only exist henceforth as a relative--as--as your wife's aunt, Bosio!"

She laughed, half-bitterly, half-nervously, at the idea, and turning away her face she held out her hand to him.

He took it, and held it, pressing it between both his own.

"Do you mean this, Matilde?" he asked in a low voice.

"Yes, I mean it," she answered, speaking away from him with averted face.

He could not see, but she was biting her lip till it almost bled. In her own strange way she loved him with all her evil nature, and if she were breaking with him now, it was to save herself from something worse than death. It was the hardest thing she had ever done. He hesitated: there was the mean prompting of the spirit, to take her at her word and to set himself free, since she offered him freedom, caring not whether she might repent to-morrow; and there was the instinct of fidelity which in so much dishonour had remained with him through so many years.

"Besides," she said hoarsely, "I do not love you any more. I would not keep you longer, if I could. Oh--we shall be friends! But the other--no! Good bye, Bosio--good bye."

Something moved him, as she had not meant that anything should.

"I do not believe you," he said. "You love me still--I will not leave you!"

"No, no! I do not--but if you still care at all, save me. Say good bye, but do the rest also. You are free now. You are an honourable man again. Bosio, look at my hair. You used to love it. Would you have it cut off and cropped by the convict's shears? My hands that you are holding--dear--would you love them galled by the irons, riveted upon them for years? Save me, Bosio! You are free now--save me, for the dear sake of all that has been!"

Still she turned her face away, and as Bosio saw the waving richness of her brown hair and heard her words, he felt a desperate thrust of pain in his heart. It was all so fearfully true and possible.

"But do not say that you do not love me," he pleaded, in low tones, bending to her ear.

There was a moment's silence, and he thought he saw a convulsive movement of her throat--he guessed it rather than saw it.

"It is true!" she cried, with an effort, drawing her hands from him and turning her pale face fiercely. "If I loved you still, do you think I would give you to Veronica Serra, or to any living woman? Was that the way I loved you? Was that how you loved me?"

"Ah no! But now--"

She would not let him speak.

"Do you think that if I loved you, as I have loved you--as I did once--I should be so ready to give you up? Do you know me so little? Do you think that I have no pride?" asked Matilde Macomer, holding him at arm's length from her with her strong hands and throwing back her head, while the lids half veiled her eyes, and her face grew paler still.

The words that were so strange, spoken by such a woman, fell from her lips with force and earnest conviction, whether she truly believed that they had meaning for her, or not. Then her voice changed and softened again.

"But your friend--yes, always, as you must be mine--that and nothing more. We have said good bye to all the rest--now go, for I would rather be alone for a little while. Go, Bosio--please go!"

"As you will," he answered.

Then he kissed her hand and looked into her face for a moment, as though expecting that she should speak again. But she only shook her head, and her hand gave his no pressure. He kissed it again. There were tears in his eyes when he left the room. _

Read next: Chapter 7

Read previous: Chapter 5

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