She stared at him for a moment, perplexed, then flew into a towering and ungovernable rage.  “Ah,” she cried, and she shook in every member.  “Ah, now you may mean what you please, for I have done.  Do you dare to suspect me?  Do you dare to treat me as an infamous woman?  Oh, oh, do you dare?  You shall have no need to repeat it.  I will go to my mother’s house—­I will go now—­now—­now.  Nonna, my cloak and shoes—­at once.  I have been good—­I have always tried to be good—­and do you faithful duty.  I have known what I ought to do—­I have been proud to be Dr. Lanfranchi’s wife.  I thought I would show to my people that a girl of Siena could be proud, even of a Venetian pig, if he were her husband.  Ah, but no more, no more.  No, I will work elsewhere, for better wages—­ you have seen the last of Aurelia.”  She was superbly beautiful as she turned, pointing to me.  “This youth—­this mad, incomprehensible youth—­ what harm has he done you compared to what he has now done to me?  He loves me, he says—­I don’t understand his love—­but why should he not?  Am I to fall in love with everybody who says that?  Do you think you are the only one?  And—­and—­why!—­you have never said that you loved me:  no, you have not.  You just took to me, and made me work—­your servant or your doll—­your plaything when you were done with the cafe—­me, a Gualandi of Siena—­and you, a pig of Padua.  Good Heaven, for what do you take me, sir?  Did you find me in the street?  Is my family one of wretches?  Oh, what a man you are; ungrateful, cruel, hard as the grave.  Yes, yes, Nonna, fold me close in my cloak; it will keep me from such cold as this.”  She stood, cloaked and ready:  we all stood—­the doctor like a rock, I like a man dead at his prayers.

She looked from one of us to the other, to me second.  “You told me that you loved me, Don Francis,” she said.  “I am going to my mother.  Will you take me?”

I never loved her so well as at this moment when I said, “Madam, I dare not do it.”

She blushed, I know she was mute with astonishment.  I thought old Nonna would have torn my eyes out.  “Dog!” she called me, “son of a dog.”

“I dare not go with you, madam,” I repeated.  “I love you too well.  I have done you so much wrong, meaning to do right, that I dare not now risk an act which I know to be wrong.  Oh,” I cried, as my distress grew, “oh, unsay those words, Aurelia!  You could not mean them, they were not yours.”

She tossed her head, and shrugged.  “I will be careful not to say them again, at least,” she said.  “They evidently distressed you.  Come, Nonna—­ we will leave these gentlemen.”  The doctor never moved—­I followed her with my eyes.  One more look from hers would have drawn us both to our destruction.  I thank God at this hour that she never showed it me.  She went out and shut the door behind her.  Neither of us moved until we heard the street door bang.  We had been waiting for that.