Ten minutes later they were in the streets of the town, avoiding its lighted thoroughfares, walking swiftly, Tita in the lead. At length, threading a lane between walled gardens flanking great houses whose fronts frowned on wider avenues, they stood before a columned gate. This Gordon’s guide unlocked.
“I will watch here,” he said. “You will not tell her I came to you first of my own thought, Excellence?” he added anxiously.
“I will not tell her,” answered Gordon.
He entered with a loudly beating heart.
CHAPTER XXXV
IN THE CASA GARDEN
The close was still—only the flutter of moths and the plash of a fountain tinkling wetly. Here and there in the deeper shade of cloistral walks, the moonlight, falling through patches of young leaves, flecked bloodless bacchantes and bronze Tritons nestling palely in shrub tangles of mimosa. This was all Gordon distinguished at first as he moved, his hands before him, his feet feeling their way on the cool sward.
Suddenly a low breath seemed to pierce the stillness. A sense of nearness rushed upon him. His arm, outstretched, touched something yielding.
“Teresa!” he cried, and his hands found hers and drew her close to him. In that first moment of silence he was keenly conscious of her breath against his cheek, hurried and warm.
“I know—I know,” he said in a choked voice. “Tita told me all. I would give my body inch by inch, my blood drop by drop to give back to your life what I have taken from it!”
She shook her head. “You have taken nothing from it. Before that night on the square it held nothing—I have learned that since.”