Enrica’s distrust of him, her silence, her tears, cut Nobili to the soul.  He knows he deserves it.  Ah!—­with her there before him, how he curses himself for ever having doubted her!  Every justification suddenly leaves him.  He is utterly confounded.  The gossip of the club—­Count Marescotti and his miserable verses—­the marchesa herself—­what are they all beside the purity of those saint-like eyes?  Nera, too—­false, fickle, sensual Nera—­a mere thing of flesh and blood—­he had left her for Nera!  Was he mad?

At that moment, of all living men, Count Nobili seemed to himself the most unworthy!  He must go—­he did not deserve to stay!

“Enrica—­before I leave you, speak to me one word of forgiveness—­I implore you!”

As he speaks their eyes meet.  Yes, she is his own Enrica—­unchanged, unsullied!—­the idol is intact within its shrine—­the sanctuary is as he had left it!  No rude touch had soiled that atmosphere of purity and freshness that floated like an aureole around her!

How could he leave her?—­if they must part, he would hear his fate from her own lips.  Enrica is leaning against the wall speechless, her face shaded by her hand.  Big tears are trickling through her fingers.  Unable to support herself she clings to a chair, then seats herself.  And Nobili, pale with passion stands by, and dares not so much as to touch her—­dares not touch her, although she is his wife!

In the fury of his self-reproach, he digs his hands into the masses of thick chestnut curls that lie disordered about his head.

Fool, idiot!—­had he lost her?  A terrible misgiving overcomes him?  It fills him with horror.  Was it too late?  Would she never forgive him?  Nobili’s troubled eyes, that wander all over her, ask the question.

“Speak to me—­speak to me!” he cries.  “Curse me—­but speak to me!”

At this appeal Enrica turns her tear-bedewed face toward him.

“Nobili,” she says at last, very low, “would you have gone without seeing me?”

Nobili dares not lie to her.  He makes no reply.

“Oh, do not deceive me, Nobili!” and Enrica wrings her hands and looks piteously into his face.  “Tell me—­would you have come to me?”

It is only by a strong effort that Nobili can restrain himself from folding Enrica in his arms and in one burning kiss burying the remembrance of the miserable past.  But he trembles lest by offending her the tender flower before him may never again expand to the ardor of his love.  If Fra Pacifico has not by his arguments already shaken Nobili’s conviction of the righteousness of his own conduct, the sight of Enrica utterly overcomes him.

“Deceive you!” he exclaims, approaching her and seizing her hands which she did not withdraw—­“deceive you!  How little you read my heart!”

He holds her soft hands firmly in his—­he covers them with kisses.  Enrica feels the tender pressure of his lips pass through her whole frame.  But, can she trust him?