“Nothing else!  I am glad you did, for we can see each other as much as we like now.  But how shall we manage it in the end, since we cannot marry?”

“Break the imaginary engagement, I suppose,” Malipieri answered gloomily.  “I see nothing else to be done.”

“But then my mother says that no decent man will marry me.  It will be just the same, all over again.  It was very clever of her; she is trying to force you to do what she wants.  In the meantime you can come and see me every day—­that is the best part of it.  Besides, she will leave us alone together here, for hours, because she thinks that the more you fall in love with me the more you will wish to get a divorce.  Oh, she is a very clever woman!  You do not know her as I do!”

Malipieri marvelled at the amazing combination of girlish innocence and keen insight into her mother’s worldly and cynical character, which Sabina had shown during the last few minutes.  There never yet was a man in love with girl or woman who did not find in her something he had never dreamt of before.

“She is clever,” he assented gravely, “but she cannot make me break that promise, even for your sake.  I cannot help looking forward and thinking what the end must be.”

“It is much better to enjoy the present,” Sabina answered.  “We can be together every day.  You will write to your—­no, she is not your wife, and I will not call her so!  She would not be really your wife if she could, for she made you promise never to go and see her.  That was nice of her, for of course she knew that if she saw you often, she must end by falling in love with you.  Any woman would; you know it perfectly well.  You need not shake your head at me, like that.  You will write to her, and explain, and she will understand, and then we will let things go on as long as they can till something else happens.”

“What can possibly happen?”

“Something always happens.  Things never go on very long without a change, do they?  I am sure, everything in my life has changed half a dozen times in the last fortnight.”

“In mine, too,” Malipieri answered.

“And if things get worse, and if worse comes to worst,” Sabina answered, “I have told you what I mean to do.  I shall come to you, wherever you are, and you will have to let me stay, no matter what people choose to say.  That is, if you still care for me!”

She laughed softly and happily, and not in the least recklessly, though she was talking of throwing the world and all connection with it to the winds.  The immediate future looked bright to her, since they were to meet every day, and after that, “something” would happen.  If nothing did, and they had to face trouble again, they would meet it bravely.  That was all any one could do in life.  She had found happiness too suddenly after an unhappy childhood, to dream of letting it go, cost what it might to keep it.

But she saw how grave he looked and the hopeless expression in his loving eyes, as he turned them to her.