She turned to him with a look of reproach.

“Does a woman doubt a man who has done what you have done for me?” she asked.  “I wanted to know something more—­a little more than what you wrote to me.  It would make a difference, perhaps.”

“To you, Signora?” asked Sabina quickly.

“No.  To you.  Perhaps it would make a great difference in the way I should act.”  She paused an instant.  “It is rather hard to ask, I know,” she added shyly.

She seemed to be a timid little woman.

“Please tell us what it is that you wish to know, Signora,” said Malipieri, in the same kind tone, trying to encourage her.

“I should like to ask—­I hardly know just how to say it—­if you would tell me whether you are fond of each other—­”

“What difference can that make to you, Signora?” Malipieri asked with sudden hardness.  “You know that I shall not break my word.”

She was hurt by the tone, and looked down meekly, as if she had deserved the words.

“We love each other with all our hearts,” said Sabina, before either of the others could say more.  “Nothing shall ever part us, in this world or the next.”

There was a ring of clear defiance to fate in the girl’s voice, and Signora Malipieri turned to her quickly, with a look of sympathy.  She knew the cry that comes from the heart.

“But you think that you can never be married,” she said, almost to herself.

“How can we?  You know that we cannot!” It was Malipieri who answered.

Then the timid little woman raised her head and looked him full in the face, and spoke without any more hesitation.

“Do you think that I have never thought of this possibility, during all these years?” she asked.  “Do you really believe that I would let you suffer for me, let your life be broken, let you give up the best thing that any life holds, after you have done for me what perhaps no man ever did for a woman before?”

“I know you are grateful,” Malipieri answered very gently.  “Do not speak of what I have done.  It has not been at any sacrifice, till now.”

But Sabina leaned forward and grasped the Signora Malipieri’s hands.  Her own were trembling.

“You have come to help us!” she cried.  “It is so easy, now that I know that you love each other.”

“How?” asked Sabina, breathless.  “By a divorce?”

“Yes.”

“I shall never ask for that,” Malipieri said, shaking his head.

“You are the best and truest gentleman that ever protected a woman in trouble, Signor Malipieri,” said the little woman quietly.  “I know that you will never divorce me.  I know you would not even think of it.”

“Well, but then—­” Malipieri stopped and looked at her.

“I shall get a divorce from you,” she said, and then she looked happily from one to the other.

Malipieri covered his eyes with his hand.  He had not even thought of such a solution, and the thought came upon him in his despair like a flood of dazzling light.  Sabina was on her knees, and had thrown her arms wildly round the Signora Malipieri’s neck, and was kissing her again and again.