'It shall end in our way,' said Orsino, in the low tone that means most with a man.
'You and I? Married?' Again she shook her head. 'Oh no! It will be different—the end! I am not cowardly, but this is killing me. My mother—' She lowered her voice still more, and hesitated. 'My mother is going mad, they say.'
Orsino wondered how fate could do more than it had done upon the Corleone.
'Nothing shall take you from me,' he said, his arms going round her and folding her to him. 'Nothing, neither death, nor madness, nor sorrow.'
She was silent for a moment, and the mirage of happiness rose in the mist of tears.
'But it is not possible,' she said, as the brief vision faded. 'You know it is not possible. Ippolito did not do it—I know. There is not that to separate us. But you could not take the sister of such brothers as mine have been to be your wife. How could you? And your father, your mother—all that great family of yours—they would not have me, they would not—oh, it is impossible! Do not talk to me of it, love. It will make it harder to die.'
'To die? You?' His voice rang with life.
Suddenly, and for the first time since he had loved her, he pressed her head gently backwards, and his lips met hers.
She started, and a little shiver ran to her small hands, and her eyelids dropped till they closed, and still he kissed her, long and passionately. And the colour rose slowly in her cheeks when her pulse beat again, for it had stopped a moment, and then she hid the scarlet blush against his coat, and heard the heavy, mysterious beating of his heart through flesh and bone and cloth,—the strong, deep sound which no woman forgets who has heard it, and has known that it was for her.
'You can make me live,' she said softly. 'But not without you,' she added, drawing a deep breath between.