Then, still holding out his hand, he repeated insistently.
“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”
They were in one of the steep, narrow streets that lie beyond the bridges and lead up to the city wall. It was still, still as the desert; she looked at him, and his earnestness quelled her sense of humor over the absurdity of the situation.
“What shall I say to you?” she asked.
“Tell me that you do not expect to meet him again.”
“Certainly I do not expect to meet him again; although, of course, I might meet him by chance at any time.”
He looked into her face with an instant’s gravest scrutiny, and then some of his shadow lifted; with the hand that he had held out he suddenly seized hers.
“You are truthfully not caring for him, n’est-ce pas?” he demanded.
Rosina pulled her hand from his grasp.
“Of course not,” she said emphatically. “Why, I never saw the man but just that once.”