There was no awkwardness in the silence, Veronica thought, for it seemed to her that he understood, and that words were hardly necessary.  If she had meant to refuse him, she would have done so through Matilde.  She smiled, looking at the clock, and thinking about it all.  Then she realized that no word had been spoken on either side, and she turned her head a little shyly, till she could just see his face, while the smile still lingered on her lips.  One hand rested on the mantelpiece, with the other she touched the artificial gardenia in her bodice.

“That is my answer, you know,” she said quietly, and her eyes waited for his.

But he only glanced at her face, and for a moment he did not move.  Then, with a graceful inclination he took her hand and raised it to his lips.  She noticed even then that his own hand was dry and burning.  He did not trust himself to speak.  When he looked up, the room whirled with him, and he saw strange colours.  He thought his teeth were chattering.

“Are you glad?” she asked, wondering a little at his silence now, and the room seemed strangely still all at once.

“Is it quite of your own free will?” he asked, as though it cost him an effort to say anything.

“Yes—­quite.  Of course!” Her face grew bright as though she were happy in removing the one doubt he had.

“I am very glad of that,” he said quietly.

“Do you think that I would marry any one under pressure?” asked Veronica, with a soft laugh.  “I will tell you something that will convince you.  It is a secret.  You must not tell my aunt that I know.  I could have married Don Gianluca della Spina.  Perhaps you know that.  Did you?  I did; but I will not tell you how.  Only, you see—­I did not care for him.”

Bosio had recovered his self-possession, which had been only momentarily shaken.  For there had been no surprise—­he had known what to expect.

“I only knew lately of the Spina’s proposal,” he said.  “But—­shall I thank you, Veronica?  Or do you understand without words?  We have known each other so long, that perhaps you may.”

“I think I understand,” she answered.

She put out her hand again and pressed his, and again he kissed her fingers.  The action was reverential, and had nothing in it of the man who loves and is accepted.  Her gentle hand, maidenly and innocent, was stretched down into the hell of word and thought and deed in which his real self had its being, and he touched it with his lips, and in his heart he knelt to kiss it, as something too holy to be in this world—­just because it was innocent, and his own was not.  For herself he set her on no pedestal, he did not worship her, he did not love her, he admired her with the cold judgment of a man of taste.  It is the purity of the unblemished and unspotted victim that makes the outward holiness of the sacrifice.  He thought of his own life and of hers, hitherto side by side, and he thought of their joint life in, the future, she taking him for what he was not, and he was ashamed.