He smiled as he uttered the threat, as if he were not jesting about his own death. Pieri did not like it, and turned to the door.
'Since you talk of fighting,' he said, 'I would give you ether by force, if I could, and let the law do what it would after I had saved your life in spite of you! If you chose to blow your brains out afterwards, that would not concern me!'
Thereupon he disappeared, shutting the door more sharply than doctors usually do when they leave a sick-room. The Mother Superior went to the bedside and leaned over Giovanni, looking into his eyes with an expression of profoundest entreaty.
'I implore you to change your mind,' she said in a low and beseeching voice, 'for the sake of the mother who bore you——'
'She is dead,' Giovanni answered quietly.
'For the sake of them that live and love you, them——'
'There is only one, Mother, and you know it; but for that only one's love I would live, not merely with one arm, but if every bone in my body were broken and twisted out of shape beyond remedy. Mother, go and tell her so, and bring me her answer—will you?'
The nun straightened herself, and her face showed what she suffered; but Giovanni did not understand.
'You are afraid,' he said, with rising contempt in his tone. 'You are afraid to take my message. It would move her! It might tempt her from the right way! It might put it into her head to beg for a dispensation after all, and the sin would be on your soul! I understand—I did not really mean that you should ask her. You let her watch here last night when you knew I could not waken, but you were careful that she should be gone before I opened my eyes. You see, I have guessed the truth! I only wonder why you let her stay at all!'
He moved his head impatiently on the pillow. The Mother Superior had drawn herself up rather proudly, folding her hands under her scapular and looking down at him coldly, her face like a marble mask again.