“That day!” he repeated. “I saw you in the gondola. I would have spared you that meeting.”
“Yet that was what told me. If I had not seen you there—” She paused.
The chains of his repression clung about him like the load of broken wings. The knowledge that had come as he walked the floor of his monastery room with the burn of a blow on his forehead, had spelled abnegation. She must never know the secret he carried—must in time forget her own. Once out, he could never shackle it again. He completed her sentence:
“You would have forgotten the sooner.”
“I should never have forgotten,” she said softly.
He was silent. He dared not look at her face, but he saw her hands, outstretched, clasping her knee.
Presently—he could not guess the dear longing for denial that made her tone shake now!—she said:
“Tita told me that—when you came to Ravenna—you had not known—”
He rose to his feet, feeling the chains weakening, the barriers of all that had lain unspoken, yet not unfelt, burning away.
“It was true,” he answered, confronting her. “I did not know it. But if I had known all I know to-night, I would have crossed seas and mountains to come to you! Now that I have seen you—what can I do? Teresa! Teresa!”