Martini glanced at her anxiously. They had come out on to the Lung'Arno, and she was staring absently across the water, with a look on her face that he hated to see.
“Gemma, dear,” he said after a moment; “are you going to let that miserable business haunt you all your life? We have all made mistakes when we were seventeen.”
“We have not all killed our dearest friend when we were seventeen,” she answered wearily; and, leaning her arm on the stone balustrade of the bridge, looked down into the river. Martini held his tongue; he was almost afraid to speak to her when this mood was on her.
“I never look down at water without remembering,” she said, slowly raising her eyes to his; then with a nervous little shiver: “Let us walk on a bit, Cesare; it is chilly for standing.”
They crossed the bridge in silence and walked on along the river-side. After a few minutes she spoke again.
“What a beautiful voice that man has! There is something about it that I have never heard in any other human voice. I believe it is the secret of half his influence.”
“It is a wonderful voice,” Martini assented, catching at a subject of conversation which might lead her away from the dreadful memory called up by the river, “and he is, apart from his voice, about the finest preacher I have ever heard. But I believe the secret of his influence lies deeper than that. It is the way his life stands out from that of almost all the other prelates. I don't know whether you could lay your hand on one other high dignitary in all the Italian Church—except the Pope himself—whose reputation is so utterly spotless. I remember, when I was in the Romagna last year, passing through his diocese and seeing those fierce mountaineers waiting in the rain to get a glimpse of him or touch his dress. He is venerated there almost as a saint; and that means a good deal among the Romagnols, who generally hate everything that wears a cassock. I remarked to one of the old peasants,—as typical a smuggler as ever I saw in my life,—that the people seemed very much devoted to their bishop, and he said: 'We don't love bishops, they are liars; we love Monsignor Montanelli. Nobody has ever known him to tell a lie or do an unjust thing.'”
“I wonder,” Gemma said, half to herself, “if he knows the people think that about him.”
“Why shouldn't he know it? Do you think it is not true?”
“I know it is not true.”