“You must not ask her disturbing questions when she is so nervous. It is all very terrible, and mostly so for me. I was to have protected and guarded her, and now, behold, it is as if she was utterly alone and friendless.”
“Oh, do not even think about me!” Carlota cried passionately. “Where is Dmitri, Griffeth? You believe in him, do you not? Maria, leave me here alone. I must speak to him in confidence. Forgive me, tanta mia, I love and trust you, but this concerns his friend. You will go, just for a little while, won’t you?”
The roses of Vallombrosa. Signora Roma met the pleading look in her eyes and the words of the old Marchese rang in her mind like a sacred charge. Romance and youth and Vallombrosa. If she had not been ambitious too, and had set her art ahead of love, what a long fair road of companionship and happiness life might have been with Bernardo Dinari, Marchese di Veracci. The tears rushed to her eyelids, and she sighed heavily in surrender as she folded Carlota to her breast.
“Take her from us,” she said to Griffeth. “Ah, I am no longer blind and hard of heart. You have taught her well, signor, and after all, it is life’s sweetest and richest song. I will go and walk in the Square and think I am back in Italy.”
Ames closed the door behind her, leaning against it, looking longingly at the girl standing in the light from the dormer windows. Ptolemy leaped up to her, rubbing his tawny length affectionately against her, his eyes gleaming like topaz.
“Dear, look at me,” he said eagerly. “You came to me again, just as you did that first day, my wonder girl. Even after everything, you had faith in me—”
She held her hands out to him, giving them to his clasp, yet holding him back.
“Have we any right to take our own happiness when it makes so many wretched? Maria, who brought me up and gave me all her love and care, and dear old Jacobelli—”
“But they are all willing now. It isn’t selfish, dear. It is our right. Remember how Dmitri always said we were the inheritors of all the love dreams of the past, and must hold the torch high for those who come after us. You know all you have been to me for months, what it meant to both of us that first night at Phelps’s when you met my eyes, and it seemed as if everything in my whole being called out to you in gladness. Carlota, don’t keep me from you! Why did you come here last night to find me, why are you here to-day, why did Jacobelli come and tell me frankly it was our love that had given your voice its power and new beauty? Yet I’ve never even kissed you once, never held you in my arms—”
Her eyes closed as his arms clasped about her and he turned her towards him in a silent, tense embrace. When she lifted her head, she was smiling, her lashes wet with tears.