"The question is, What am I to do? Alresca is dead. Shall I respect his wish, or shall I open the packet now? If he could have foreseen your anxiety, he probably would not have made these conditions. Besides, who can say that the circumstances he hints at have not already arisen? Who can say"—I uttered the words with an emphasis the daring of which astounded even myself—"that I am not already the heir of more than Alresca's goods?"
I imagined, after achieving this piece of audacity, that I was perfectly calm, but within me there must have raged such a tumult of love and dark foreboding that in reality I could scarcely have known what I was about.
Rosa's eyes fixed themselves upon me, but I sustained that gaze. She stretched forth a hand as if to take the packet.
"You shall decide," I said. "Am I to open it, or am I not to open it?"
"Open it," she whispered. "He will forgive us."
I began to break the seal.
"No, no!" she screamed, standing up again with clenched hands. "I was wrong. Leave it, for God's sake! I could not bear to know the truth."
I, too, sprang up, electrified by that terrible outburst. Grasping tight the envelope, I walked to and fro in the room, stamping on the carpet, and wondering all the time (in one part of my brain) why I should be making such a noise with my feet. At length I faced her. She had not moved. She stood like a statue, her black tea-gown falling about her, and her two hands under her white drawn face.
"It shall be as you wish," I said. "I won't open it."
And I put the envelope back into my pocket.