When we arrived and sat down Giulia took the little parcel from me and opened it. There were three or four cigars, a couple of dozen cigarettes, and a pint bottle of wine. Some sweets were also there, but I left these for Giulia.
"Very well," I said, "this is a real feast. We can live here for at least four hours with such supplies."
"Is it not good?" she asked.
"Very good," I told her; "you grow kinder every day; but I too have a little surprise for you, carissima."
"What! a surprise for me? What is it?" And she laid her pretty little hand upon my arm.
I bade her shut her eyes, and when she did so, I clasped a silver bracelet on her wrist—it had cost me more than two months' pay—and was amply rewarded for my gift by the childish joy she showed when she beheld it. How happy we were that Sunday!
But this story has little to do with happiness now that it approaches the end. When we had taken a little of the wine and were quietly enjoying our cigarettes I asked Giulia what the adjutant had said to her on the previous day.
"I will tell you all now," she said to me. "I can no longer keep it from you, though I do not wish to give you pain. You have always trusted me, as I have trusted you. Is it not so, dearest?"
"But yes," I answered; "no one could doubt you; you are too good and too true. Why, even the worst man in the battalion knows and acknowledges that."
"I am well content," Giulia said to me; "you have not erred. I have always been faithful, and I will be faithful for ever. But I cannot prevent anyone, not even the man I hate most, from loving me, and things have come to such a pass now that it is only right that you should know all."