It was the last stubborn flash of the will, fainting in physical eclipse. With the words his hand fell heavily from her shoulder and Tita caught him in his arms.
At a sign from Teresa, the servant lifted him into the carriage.
“Home!” she commanded, “and drive swiftly.”
Through the miles of rapid motion under the ebon shadows deepening to twilight she sat chafing Gordon’s hands, her eyes, widened with a great suspense, upon the broadening stain crimsoning his waistcoat.
In that interminable ride her soul passed through a furnace of transformation. The touch of his lips upon hers had been the one deathless instant of life’s unfolding. In that kiss she had felt poured out all the virginal freshness of a love renaissant and complete, no more to be withheld than a torrent leaping to the sea. But the awful instant that followed, with its first glimpse into the hideous limbo of possibilities, showed her all else that might lie in that love, of the irreparable, the disastrous, the infinitely terrifying. Her marriage had been a baleful bond of ring and book, seasoned with hate, empty of sanctity. His had been sunk somewhere in the black slough of the past, a stark dead thing. That they two should love each other—she had imagined no further. She had known her own heart, but that hour on the hill had been the complete surety that Gordon loved her fully in return.
Born of his extremity, there swelled in her now the wondrous instinct of the lioness that is a part of every woman’s love. It lent her its courage. All fear, save the one surpassing dread that gnawed her heart, slipped from her.
Dark fell before they reached the town, and in the quiet street the freight of the carriage was not noted. Before the entrance of Casa Guiccioli stood her father’s chaise.
Count Gamba met her in the hall, to start at her a strained look and at the pallid face of the man Tita carried—a face unknown to him. Paolo was behind him; by this she knew her husband was returned.
She scarcely heeded her father’s ejaculations. “Bring linen and water quickly to the large chamber in the garden wing,” she directed, “and send for Doctor Aglietti.”
Paolo went stealthily to inform his master.