“It was a momentary possession,” she answered. “The evil thing is gone.”
He sighed. “As I must go—as I must go, lest it come again.”
She did not answer. Stealing a look at her, he saw something in her face which made him knot his fingers together, as if forcibly to control some scarce endurable emotion. And so they wandered on, as it were in a tragic trance, both soul-stricken and both dumb. Threading the golden trees, as if always to weave deeper the silences between themselves and the common world, they came out presently, unconscious of how they had reached it, upon a green sward sloping to the river. And there the man turned, and gazed upon his companion.
“Do you not recognise the place?” he said—“of my shame?”
He saw her lips move, and the tears gather in her eyes.
“No, of mine.”
Could mortal fortitude forbear—endure further? With one mad step he had her in his arms, and their lips met.
CHAPTER XI.
SWEET BASIL
Fanchette was chattering to Aquaviva, like the intolerable magpie he thought her, when a couple, issuing from the orange grove, came into her ken approaching up a flowery path. She was silent instantly—a relief so grateful to the old gardener, that he was moved to raise his head from his work to examine into the cause of it. He grunted his satisfaction:
“That is a mercy. You will attend to your own duties now instead of interfering with mine.”