'Even if all you tell me were true, I should go,' answered Orsino.
'Will nothing keep you from going?' asked the girl, piteously.
'You will laugh at all this when I come back to you. You will wonder how you could have tried to frighten me with such tales.'
She looked at him a long time in silence, and then her lip quivered, so that she quickly raised one hand to her mouth to hide it.
'It would have been better if I had never left the convent,' she said in a broken voice. 'When they have killed you, I shall go back and die there.'
'When I come back, we shall be married, love—'
'Oh, no—not if you go to Camaldoli—we shall never be married in this world.'
The slight and graceful girl shook all over for a moment, and then seemed to grow smaller, as though something crushed her. But there were no tears in her eyes, though she pressed her fingers on her lips as though to force back a sob.
'Let us go back,' she said. 'I want to go home—I can pray for you, if I cannot save you. God will hear me, though you do not, and God knows that it will be your death.'
He put his arm about her and tried to comfort her, but she would not again lift her face, and he kissed her hair once more, when they were again in the shadow on the bridge. Then they waited till no one was passing through the small room, and went in silently to find her mother. She stopped him at the door of the ballroom.