“You are the only real friend I have in the world,” she said.  “But I can never love you—­never, Gianluca—­never.  It is not in me.  There 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 held it fast.  He did not turn his head.

“It has been my life,” he said, “my whole life.”

He did not try to draw away his hand, but let her hold it, if she would.  There was still magic in her touch.

“Forgive me!” she repeated more softly, and her cheek touched the arm of the chair.  “Forgive me!”