He did not understand, but he felt that a change had come over her since he had seen her a week earlier, and that it was in his favour rather than against him.
‘Justice!’ he repeated after her, but in a very different tone. ‘It would have been justice if I had put a bullet through my head when I went home that night!’
Maria’s hands left the bars of the gate and grasped Castiglione’s arm above the elbow and shook it a little.
‘Never say that again!’ she cried in a stifled voice. ‘Promise me that you will never think it again! Promise!’
He was amazed at her energy and earnestness, and he understood less and less what was passing in her heart.
‘I can only promise you that I will never do it,’ he answered gravely.
‘Yes,’ she cried in the same tone, ‘promise me that! It is what I mean. Give me your sacred word of honour! Take oath to me before the Cross—there—do you see?’ she pointed with one hand through the bars to the Crucifix in the stained window, still holding him with the other. ‘Swear solemnly that you will never kill yourself, whatever happens!’
He could well have asked if she loved him still, and she could not have denied it then; but he would not, for he was in earnest too. He had not meant to trouble her life so deeply when he had come to ask her forgiveness; far less had he dreamt that the old love had survived all. A great wave of pure devotion to the woman he had wronged swept him to her feet.
It was long since he had knelt in any church; but now he was kneeling beside her as she stood, and he was looking up to the sacred figure, and his hands were joined together.