“It is more than understanding.  It is much more.”

He remembered how he had taken her slender body in his arms to warm her when she had been almost dead of the cold and dampness, and a mad impulse was in him to press her to him now, as he had done then, and to feel her small fair head lay itself upon his shoulder peacefully, as it surely would.  He sat upright and pressed one hand upon the other rather harder than before.

“You believe it, do you not?” she asked.  “Why is your face so hard?”

“Because I am bound hand and foot, like a man who is carried to execution.”

“But we can always love each other just the same,” Sabina said, and her voice was warm and soft.

“Yes, always, and that will not make it easier to live without you,” he answered rather harshly.

“You need not,” she said, after an instant’s pause.

He turned suddenly, startled, not understanding, wondering what she could mean.  She met his eyes quite quietly, and he saw how deep and steady hers were, and the light in them.

“You need not live without me unless you please,” she said.

“But I must, since I cannot marry you, and you understand that I could not be divorced—­”

“My mother has just told me that no decent man will marry me, because all the world knows that I stayed at the palace that night.  She must be right, for she could have no object in saying it if it were not true, could she?  Then what does it matter how any one talks about me now?  I will go with you.  We cannot marry, but we shall always be together.”

Malipieri’s face expressed his amazement.

“But it is impossible!” he cried.  “You cannot do that!  You do not know what you are saying!”

“Oh, yes, I do!  That poor, kind old Sassi has left me all he had, and I can go where I please.  I will go with you.  Would you rather have me shut up in a convent to die?  That is what my mother will try to do with me, and she will tell people that I was ‘mad, poor girl’!  Do you think I do not know her?  She wants this little sum of money that I am to have, too, as if she and the others had not spent all I should have had.  Do you think I am bound to obey my mother, if she takes me to the convent door, and tells me that I am to stay there for the rest of my life?”

The gentle voice was clear and strong and indignant now.  Malipieri twisted his fingers one upon another, and sat with his head bent low.  He knew that she had no clear idea of what she was saying when she proposed to join her existence with his.  Her maiden thoughts could find no harm in it.

“You do not know what your mother said to me, before you came in,” he answered.  “She told me that she would announce our engagement at once, and made me give my word that I would not deny it to any one but my legal wife.”

“You gave your word?” Sabina asked quickly, not at all displeased.

“What could I do?”