Castiglione’s eyes softened.
‘It is for their sakes that we have promised,’ she went on. ‘For their sakes there must never again be any earthly taint upon our love, dear.’
Once more the tender word touched him. He passed his hand over his eyes as if to hide something.
‘If you were only free!’ he sighed.
Maria made a little movement.
‘The very thought of that is wrong,’ she answered bravely. ‘You must not think of it, you must never say it.’
‘I wish your husband no ill,’ Castiglione answered, in a sterner tone than she had heard yet. ‘I did him a great injury. I would make reparation if I knew how. But I am a man, Maria, a man like any other, and I love you in a man’s way, and if Montalto died I should want you for my wife, as you should be. We have promised that between us there shall be no word or thought of which we need be ashamed, even before your husband, if he were here; but more than that I will not promise, and that is already as much as any man could keep.’
Maria shook her head gravely and waited a moment before she answered.
‘I should owe myself to his memory if he were dead,’ she said at last. ‘A lifetime of faithfulness, cost what it may, is not enough to expiate what I did.’
Castiglione judged her as men judge the women they love, and he knew that for the present it was useless to oppose her. He folded his hands and listened, and she did not see that his fingers strained upon each other; nor could she guess that his heart was not beating as quietly now as when he had sat down opposite her a little while ago.