Gordon turned instantly, and turning, spoke her name half-aloud. “Teresa!” The utterance was almost automatic, the lips, startled, voicing the word that was in his mind at the moment.
She thought he recognized her through the veil, and answered with a cry expressing at one time her relief at finding him, and a quick delight that thrilled her at the sound of her name on his lips. Many things had wrought together to produce this new miracle of gladness. The strangeness and romance of their first meeting, the tragedy of loneliness she had guessed in the scene at the shop, her dread and the physical risk entailed in her adventure of this night, all had combined with cunning alchemy. When he spoke she forgot to be surprised that he had called her by name, forgot that she did not know his, forgot everything save his presence and her errand.
He leaned forward, breathing deeply. It was she! She put her veil aside quickly—her eyes were like sapphire stones!—and told him hurriedly of the threat she had heard, of her dread, all in a rush of sentences incoherent and unstudied.
“And so you came to warn me?”
“He would do it, Signore! Ah, I saw his face when he said it. You must be guarded! You must not go abroad alone!”
His mind was busy. How much she had jeopardized to reach him in that fancied danger! She, in Venice, a young girl of noble rank, with no escort save a gondolier! Risk enough for her in any case; what an enduring calamity if she should be seen and recognized there, with him!
He led her back between the pillars, put out his hand and drew the veil again across her face, speaking gravely and gently:
“What you have done is a brave and noble thing; one I shall be glad of always. It was no less courageous, nor am I less grateful, though what you heard was a mistake. Little Pasquale is not dead. I spoke with the surgeon here less than a half-hour ago. He had just come from the piazzetta. The child will recover.”
“Oh, thank God!” she breathed. She clasped her hands in very abandonment. “The blessed Virgin has heard me!”
His heart seemed suddenly to cease beating. The exclamation was a revelation far deeper than she divined. It was not joy at the life of the child that was deepest in it—it was something else: a great relief for him! He felt the blood tingle to his finger-tips. Only one emotion could speak in such an accent—only one!