Gordon’s lips compressed, his cheeks flushed with an odd sensitiveness that had long been calloused. But he saw instantly that the remark had been innocent of allusion. A weird forgotten memory shot jaggedly through his brain. Years ago—how many years ago!—he had overheard a girl’s voice repeat a mocking antithesis: “Do you think I could ever care for that lame boy?” This girl facing him had the same fair hair and blue eyes of that boyish love of his. The resemblance caught him. Was it this that had haunted him in the miniature? Was this subconscious influence what had inspired at La Mira his aching desire that she should not think worse of him than might be?
Her voice recalled him. She had not understood that veiled look, but it brought to her life what had been nearest to her thought—the resentment and regret that the virago’s shrilling voice had roused.
“What must you think of our Venice, Signore!” she said. “But they knew no better—those poor people. They cannot tell evil from good.”
“It is no matter, Signorina,” Gordon answered. “Do not give it a thought. It was not unnatural, perhaps.”
“Not unnatural!” she echoed. “Natural to think you evil? Ah, Signore—when your every touch was kindness! Could she not see in your face?”
She paused abruptly, coloring under his gaze.
The words and the flush had cut him like a knife. The lines of ravage he had challenged in the mirror her innocence had misread. In the olive wood she had seen only wretchedness, here only mercy.
“The face is a sorry index, sometimes, Signorina. In mine the world may not see what you see.”
He had schooled his tone to lightness, but her mood, still tense-drawn, felt its strain. She spoke impulsively, bravely, her heart beating hard.
“What I see there—it is pain, not evil, Signore; sorrow, but not all your own; loneliness and regret and feelings that people like those”—she threw out her hand in a passionate gesture toward the shop—“can never understand!”