‘Sit still!’ she said. ‘Say that you forgive me, if you can.’
‘With all my soul,’ he answered, drawing back into his chair, obedient to her gesture.
‘Thank you,’ she said, so low that he could hardly hear her.
With that she leaned far back in her low chair and pressed her fingers upon her eyes without covering her face, and he saw the warmth come and go in her soft pale cheeks, and then come back again. Indeed, it had not been easy for her. Presently she opened her eyes, and folded her hands on her lap, and gazed happily into his face.
‘I can look at you now,’ she said simply, ‘and it is not wrong.’
‘No, indeed!’
But he did not know what he was saying, nor what he should say, for in a moment she had changed all the greater thoughts of his life. She had taken from him the burden of the old accusation which she had made him believe was just in spite of himself; but it was like lifting heavy weights from a balance very suddenly; the whole mechanism of his mind and conscience quivered and trembled when the strain was gone, and swung violently this way and that.
Presently she was speaking again, and he began to hear and understand.
‘I am not going to pretend anything,’ she was saying. ‘But I will not hide anything either. No, I will not! There is nothing to be ashamed of now, because we have made up our minds that there never shall be again. We promise each other that, don’t we, Balduccio?’
‘I promise you that, come what may,’ he answered, well knowing what he said now.