He tried to laugh gently.

“But if I want to marry you, it is because I mean never to part from you,” he said.

“No!” she cried.  “It is because you are afraid that you will leave me, unless you are bound to me.”

“Regina!” Marcello protested, by his tone.

“It is as I say.  It is because you are honourable.  It is because you wish to be faithful.  It is because you want to be true.  But what do I care for honour, or faith, or truth, if I can only have them of you because you are tied to me?  I only want love.  That is everything.  I want it, but I have never asked it of you, and never shall.  Is love money, that you can take it out of your purse and give it?  Is love a string, that the priest and the mayor can tie the ends so that they can never come undone?  I do not know what it is, but it is not that!”

She laughed scornfully, as if she were angry at the thought.  But Marcello had made up his mind, and was obstinate.

“We must be married at once,” he said quietly, and fully believing that he could impose his will upon hers.  “If I had not been weak and foolish, we should have been married long ago.  But for a long time after my illness I had no will of my own.  I am sorry.  It was my fault.”

“It was not your fault, it was the illness, and it was my will.  If I had said, any day in those first two years, ’Make me your wife, for I wish to be a real signora,’ would you not have done it?”

“You know I would.”

“But I would not, and I will not now.  I am not a real signora.  I am beautiful—­yes, I see that.  Am I blind when I look into my glass?  I am very beautiful.  We have not often met any woman in our travels as beautiful as I am.  Am I blind?  I have black hair, like the common people, but my hair is not coarse, like a mule’s tail.  It is as fine as silk.  My eyes are black, and that is common too; but my eyes are not like those of the buffaloes in the Campagna, as the other women’s are where I was born.  And I am not dark-skinned; I am as white as the snow on Monte Cavo, as white as the milk in the pan.  Also I have been told that I have beautiful feet, though I cannot tell why.  They are small, this is the truth, and my hands are like those of a signora.  But I am not a real signora, though I have all this.  How can you marry me?  None of your friends would speak to me, because I have not even been an honest girl.  That was for you, but they do not count love.  Your servants at the villa would laugh at you behind your back, and say, ’The master has married one of us!’ Do you think I could bear that?  Tell me what you think!  Am I of stone, to bear that people should laugh at you?”

She took breath at last and leaned back again, folding her arms and fixing her splendid eyes on his face, and challenging him to answer her.

“We will go and live in Calabria, at San Domenico, for a while,” he said.  “We need not live in Rome at all, unless we please, for we have the whole world before us.”