He spoke in short sentences, nervously, and when he stopped he bit his moustache.
'There is something else,' Angela answered. 'I see it in your eyes. There is something I do not know, some still worse news. Sit down there by the fire opposite me and tell me everything, for I am not afraid. Nothing can frighten me now.'
She seated herself where she had sat more than half the day, and he took the chair to which she had pointed. She poked the small green logs with the antiquated tongs and watched the sparks that flew upwards with every touch while she waited for him to speak. But he looked at her in silence, forgetting everything for a while except that he was really alone with her, almost for the first time in his life. He changed his position and bent forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands together, so that he was nearer to her. Without turning her face from the fire she saw him in a side-glance, but made no answering motion.
'Tell me what it is,' she said softly. 'Only one thing could hurt me now.'
'It is hard to tell,' he answered in rather a dull voice.
She misunderstood, and turned to him slowly with wondering and frightened eyes. Her hand weakened, without quite losing its hold, and the ends of the clumsy tongs clattered on the brick hearth. The doubt that had sprung upon her like a living thing as soon as she saw him, began to dig its claws into her heart.
'If it is so hard to tell,' she said, 'it must be that one thing.' She turned resolutely to the fire again. 'If it is to be good-bye, please go away quietly and leave me alone.'
The words were not all spoken before he had caught her arm, so suddenly that the old tongs fell on the bricks with a clang. Like him, she had been leaning forward in her low chair, and as he drew her to him she involuntarily slipped from her seat and found herself kneeling on one knee beside him. She gave a little cry, more of surprise than of displeasure or timidity, but he did not heed her. It was the first time they had ever been left alone together, and while he still held her with his right hand his left stole round her neck, to bring her face nearer.
But she resisted him almost fiercely; she set both her hands against his chest and pushed herself from him with all her might, and the red blush rose even to her forehead at the thought of the kiss she almost saw on his lips, a kiss that hers had never felt. He meant nothing against her will, and when he felt that she was matching her girl's strength against his, as if she feared him, his arms relaxed and he let her go. She sprang to her feet like a young animal released, and leaned against the mantelpiece breathing hard, and fixing her burning eyes on the old engraving of Saint Ursula, asleep in a queer four-post bedstead with her crown at her feet, that hung over the fireplace. But instead of rising to stand beside her, Giovanni leaned back in his chair, his hands crossed over one knee; and instead of looking up to her face, he gazed steadily down at the hem of her long black skirt, where it lay motionless across the wolf's skin that served for a hearth-rug.
'What is it?' she asked, after a long pause, and rather unsteadily.