“It was a hideous crime to wreck two lives,” he exclaimed. “It has wrecked your life; that is the penalty. When you bartered for money all that——”
“Mario, stop,” she said, softly, touching his arm, while her face lit up in anticipation of the joyous message she had for him. “We are the victims of a misunderstanding.”
“Are you not his wife?” he demanded, puzzled by her smile and sparkling eyes.
“Yes; but only in the view of the world,” she told him, yielding to an impulse, and glad in the consciousness that this was so. “Even that I should not have been,” she went on, “but for a message that bore your name. The will of others did not prevail. Ah, no! When I became the wife of Antonio Tarsis it was the will, as I believed, of Mario Forza.”
“Hera!” he exclaimed. “Of what message do you speak?”
“Your despatch from Rome,” she answered, blissful in the conviction that it was not his.
“I sent no message from Rome. I have never sent you a message.”
Hera laughed for sheer joy. “Nor did you receive one from me the night you went away,” she surmised, seeing the hand of Tarsis in it all.
“Yes; I received a message from you.”
“Ah, where?”