"I do," he said. "There is no woman alive of whom I believe more good than I do of you."
"Then trust me a little, and believe, too, that I am suffering quite as much as Guido. I have agreed to take your advice, to obey you, since it is that and nothing else—"
"I have no power to give you orders. I wish I had!"
"You have right on your side. That is power, and I obey you. You have told me what to do, and I shall do it, and be glad to do it. But even after what I have done, I have some privileges left. I have a secret, and I am ashamed of it, and it can do no good to Guido to know it, much less to you. Please let me keep it in my own way."
"Yes. But if you are afraid that I should hurt the man, if I knew his name, you are mistaken."
"I am not in the least afraid of that," Cecilia answered, and the light filled her eyes again as she looked at him. "You are too just to hate an innocent man. It is not his fault that I love him, and he will never know it. He will never guess that I think him the best, and truest, and bravest man alive, and that he is all this world to me, now and for ever!"
She spoke quietly enough, but there was a radiant joy in her face which Lamberti never forgot. While keeping her secret, she was telling him at last to his face that she loved him, and it was the first time she had ever spoken such words out of her dreams. In them indeed they had been familiar to her lips, as words like them had been to his.
He leaned forward, resting one elbow on his knee, and his chin upon his closed hand, and he looked at her long in silence. He envied her for having been able to say aloud what she felt, under cover of her secret, and he longed to answer her, to tell her that he loved her even better than she loved that unknown man, to hear himself say it to her only once, come what might. But for Guido he would have spoken, for as he gazed at her the instinctive masculine conviction returned stronger than ever, that if he chose he could make her love him. For a moment he was absolutely sure of it, but he only sat still, looking at her.
"You believe me now," she said at last, leaning back and turning her eyes away.
"Poor Guido!" he exclaimed.