Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she turned from him, pretending to be interested in the convent walls on the edge of the hill below which they were driving.
“So long as I stay with you! My darling, do you think business or pleasure, or any claim in this world, will ever take me from you any more? All your hours are precious to me, Isola. I hardly live when I am away from you. Wherever your doctor may send you, or your own fancy may lead you, I shall go with you, unhesitatingly—without one regret for anything I leave behind.”
“Don’t say these things,” she cried suddenly, with a choking sob; “you are too good to me. There are times when I can’t bear it.”
“SO, FULL CONTENT SHALL HENCEFORTH BE MY LOT.”
Allegra was not inexorable. There, in the ruins of the Imperial baths, where Shelley dreamed the wonder-dream of his Prometheus, Captain Hulbert pleaded his cause. Could love resist the pleading of so fond a lover? Could art withstand the allurements of Venice—Titian and Tintoret, the cathedral of St. Mark and the Palace of the Doges, the birthplace of Desdemona and of Shylock, the home of Byron and of Browning?
She consented to a Roman marriage.
“I can’t help wishing I could be a Papist just for that one day,” she said lightly. “An Anglican marriage seems so dry and cold compared with the pomps and splendours of Rome.”