“They said there was a girl in Lisbon whom you loved,” she said. “I knew it was a lie.”
“Yes,” he whispered, “it was a lie. Kiss me on the mouth.”
His arm curved itself around her neck, and the red lips which had mocked melted upon his own.
“Did you suffer?” he murmured.
She began to sob like a child, as she had sobbed at the feet of the Virgin.
“I told you that you would suffer! It was the same thing with me. Saints of Heaven! human beings cannot bear that long. I shall not die, and I will make you forget the pain. Stay with me, and let me see your eyes and touch your lips every hour, that I may know you are Pepita, and that you have given yourself to me.”
“I will stay through all the day and night,” she answered. “They cannot make me go away if I do not wish it. They always give me my way. I have always had it—the Virgin herself has given it to me.”
It seemed this was true. In a few months from then the people who strolled in the Public Garden on Sunday looked at a beautiful young couple who walked together.
“There are two who are mad with love for each other,” it was said. “Sebastiano and his wife. She is the one he threw his devisa to when he thought himself a dead man. They used to call her ‘the pretty sister of Jose.’”