A slave again of love,—at least of thee!”
Kneeling over the fungus, absorbed, she had not heard a quick step behind her. She heard nothing in her abandon, till a voice—his voice—spoke her name.
CHAPTER XXXIX
BARRIERS BURNED AWAY
Teresa came to her feet with a cry. Her mingled emotions were yet so recent that she had had no time to recover poise. Gordon’s face was as strangely moved. Surprise edged it, but overlapping this was a something lambent, desirous, summoned by sight of her tears.
In the first swift glimpse, through the fern fronds, of that agitated form bent above the fungus, he had noted the tokens of returning strength—and knew her present grief was from some cause nearer than the casa in Ravenna. These were not tears of mere womanly sensibility, called forth by the lines written there, for a shadow of pain was still lurking in her eyes. Was it grief for him? He tossed aside gloves and riding-crop and drew her to a seat on the warm pine-needles before he spoke:
“I did not imagine your eyes would ever see that!”
She wiped away the telltale drops hastily, feeling a guilty relief to think he had misread them.
“This is an old haunt of mine,” she said. “I loved it when I was a girl—only a year ago, how long it seems!—in the convent there!”
He started. The fact explained her presence to-day. She had known those walls that hid Allegra! It seemed to bring them immeasurably nearer. If he could only tell her! Reckless, uncaring as she knew a part of his past had been, could he bear to show her this concrete evidence of its dishonor?
Looking up at the pallid comeliness under its slightly graying hair, Teresa was feeling a swift, clairvoyant sense of the struggle that had kept him from her, without understanding all its significance.