"To-morrow morning I will give you an answer. Then I am going away for a few days to Pæstum, and cannot see you again till we meet in Paris. Recollect, I warned you, I bring no heart, no love; both are lost hopelessly in the ashes of the past. I never loved but one man—the husband of my youth, the father of my baby; and his loss I shall mourn till the coffin closes above me. General Laurance, you are running a fearful hazard, and the very marble of the altar should find a voice to cry out and stay your madness."
She shivered, and her eyes burned almost supernaturally large and lustrous.
Charmed by her beauty and grace, which had from the beginning of their acquaintance attracted him more powerfully than any other woman had ever done, and encouraged by the colossal vanity that had always predominated in his character, he merely laughed and caressed her hand.
"Can any hazard deter me when the reward will be the privilege, the right to fold you in my arms? I am afraid of nothing that can result from making you my wife. Do not cloud my happiness by conjuring up spectres that only annoy you, that cannot for an instant influence me. Your hands are icy and you have no shawl. Let me take you home."
Silently she accepted his arm, and as the fringy acacias trembled and sighed above her, she walked by his side; wondering if the black shadow that hung like a pall over the distant crest of Vesuvius were not a fit symbol of her own wretched doomed existence, threatening a sudden outbreak that would scatter ruin and despair where least expected?
Nearing the Villa gate General Laurance asked:
"What is the character of your drama? Is it historic?"
"Eminently historic."
"In what era?"
"In the last eighteen or twenty years."