"Yes," Malipieri answered, smiling, "that was it. They loved each other dearly."
"It was splendid of you," she said. "I never dreamt that any man would do such a thing."
"It cannot be undone." He was at least free to say that much, sadly.
There was a pause, and they looked away from each other. At last Sabina laid her hand lightly upon his for a moment, though she did not turn her face to him.
"I should not like you so much, if you wished to undo it," she said.
"Thank you," he answered, withdrawing the hand she released when she had finished speaking, and folding it upon his other. "I should love you less, if you did not understand me so well."
"It is more than understanding. It is much more."
He remembered how he had taken her slender body in his arms to warm her when she had been almost dead of the cold and dampness, and a mad impulse was in him to press her to him now, as he had done then, and to feel her small fair head lay itself upon his shoulder peacefully, as it surely would. He sat upright and pressed one hand upon the other rather harder than before.
"You believe it, do you not?" she asked. "Why is your face so hard?"
"Because I am bound hand and foot, like a man who is carried to execution."