"And yet I bore it because I knew it sprang from love. It is only natural that with the one the other should also cease."
Reinhold made an impatient movement. "Beatrice you demand what is impossible, when you require that a human heart should ever and for ever glow with those volcanic feelings which alone you call love."
She had approached his seat, and placed her hand on its back, while she looked down at him with a strange expression.
"I see certainly that it is impossible to require from the cold heart of a Northerner such love as I give and demand."
"You should have left him in his north," said Reinhold, gloomily; "perhaps the cold there would have been better for him than the everlasting glow of the south."
"Is that intended for a reproach? Was it I who tore you from your home?"
"No! I went voluntarily, but--be just, Beatrice!--you were the moving power. Who urged me constantly to the resolution? Who held my artist's course again and again before my eyes? Who dubbed me a coward as I started back at the responsibility, and at last placed the fatal choice before me of flight or our separation? Excuse me--you knew how the decision must fall."
The Italian's dark eyes flashed threateningly, but she forced herself to be calm.
"Our love depended on it," declared she, proudly; "our love depended on it, and your artist's career. I rescued a genius for the world when I rescued you for myself."
He was silent. The defence appeared to find no echo in his heart. She bent lower to him, and her voice sounded sweet and fascinating again, but the unnatural expression did not leave her features.