She had begun to hurt him.
"I thought you might," he said, faintly but steadily. "I almost thought you did."
"No," she repeated, with ever-increasing gentleness. "No. Do not think that—please do not!"
He said nothing, but again he moved his head. Then, seeing that the moment had come, and that she must face it with truth or lie to him while he lived, she turned her face bravely towards him, to tell him all her heart.
"You are the only real friend I have in the world," she said. "But I can never love you—never, Gianluca—never. It is not in me. There is no one in the whole world for whom I care as I do for you. I cannot imagine anything that I could not do for your sake. But not love—not love. That is something else. I do not know what it means. You could make me understand anything but that. Oh—why must I say it, when it is so hard to say?"
His face seemed cut, as a mask of pain, in alabaster, and the appealing, hungry eyes waited for each fresh hurt.
"You made me think that you might love me," he said, the slow words hardly forming themselves on his dry lips.
"Then God forgive me!" she cried, clasping her hands and bending her face over them. "And yet—and yet I knew it. I felt it. I meant to tell you, if you did not know! I only wished not to hurt you—it is so hard to say."
"Yes," he answered, scarcely above his breath. "I see it is," he added, after a long time.
As he lay in the deep chair, he turned his face from her, on the cushion, till she could not see his eyes, and then was quite still. It would have been easier if he had reproached her vehemently, if he had turned and tried to win her again, and poured out his heart full of love. But he lay there, like a dead angel, with his face turned from her, hardly breathing.