He thanked her with a smile.
"And the friend, have you such an one? We can't get away until to-morrow, and we must not give Valentini any occasion to guess our plans or interfere with them, before I get you safely away. A man like him would be capable of anything, out of spite, and we must not play into his hands. He must know nothing until you are well out of reach. But I do hate the thought, ma chérie, of your going back to his roof—is there no one you could go to? You could say you had quarreled with him,—anything—"
Ragna thought of Virginia Ferrati, but was afraid of facing her sharp eyes and keen questions.
"Yes, I have a friend, a good friend, but I should have to take her into my confidence, and somehow I don't like the idea. I think that until we get away the less anyone knows of our plans, the better. Besides, dear, what harm is there if I do go home? I can arrange things so as not to see my husband,—I can say I have a headache and lock myself into my room."
"I don't like the thought of you under his vile roof. You are mine, now, Ragna, do you hear? Mine!"
She turned her face flushed with pleasure, and her dewy glistening eyes to him.
"Ah, dear, what does it matter for a few hours more, since we know that we belong to each other? I have borne with it all for over five years,—" his gesture forbade reminiscence,—"now it is over and I am free, I am yours—What can a few hours more or less, matter? And then there are the children—I must see them once again, poor little souls!"
Her voice broke slightly as she said the last words; Mimmo's trusting little face rose before her eyes, but she thrust the vision away,—even he, for the moment was but a part of the hated past which she wished to blot out.
Angelescu's face took on an undefinable expression, part constraint, part displeasure, part pity. In spite of himself, a vague jealousy of these children, the living proofs of Ragna's past, the concrete, undeniable evidence of her relations with other men. He had even felt a sort of elation, when she had told him, in relating the scene of the morning, of Egidio's threat to keep Mimmo, should she leave her home, thus taking advantage of the rights the law conferred on him. Now that he had found Ragna again, he wanted her all to himself; the past could not be helped and he was ready to accept it in the abstract, and to put it away from them both. But a sense of shame came over him, he seemed to be matching himself against the slender strength of a child. Still somebody must suffer, and after all it was Valentini's fault and not his as he was ready to accept the child as part of the burden he assumed, and do his conscientious best by it. Ragna's manner when she had talked to him of Beppino had showed him how evidently she considered the child a part of his father as distinct from herself, and he had been glad of it, for while he could bring himself to accept Mimmo, the other, the child of the hated oppressor of the woman he loved would be a burden beyond his endurance. Beppino had thus been eliminated from the question from the very beginning, and as it seemed, he was to be spared the presence of Mimmo also; Ragna and he were to be free to begin their life on a new basis, unencumbered by the evidences of past bondage. He let his thoughts dwell on these considerations, but was not able to still entirely the pricking of his conscience. It was, perhaps, more to ease this than for any other reason that he gave his consent to Ragna's returning to her home for this one last night.
"Certainly you must see the children again," he assented gravely.