"Because it is good to give it thus. You, if you loved, would you not do the same?"
"I would do the same. I would give my life."
"You see! But forget that word love; it escaped me involuntarily. It is not the man who loves you, it is the devoted friend, it is the brother, whom you are to remember. My every day will be at your disposal. I swear that no unhallowed thought shall move me."
"I believe you," she said.
She gave him her hand. He kissed it.
IV.
Anna was as good as her word, and on her return to Naples shut herself up in solitude and silence, receiving no one, visiting no one, spending much of her time in her own room, going in the morning for long walks in the hope of tiring herself out, speaking but little, and living in a sort of moral somnolence that seemed to dull her sorrows. Her husband and sister continued to enjoy their liberty, as they had enjoyed it at Sorrento. She left them to themselves. She was alternately consumed by suspicions and remorseful for them. In vain she sought comfort from religion, her piety could not bear the contact of her earthly passion, and was destroyed by it. She had gone to her confessor, meaning to tell him everything, but when she found herself kneeling before the iron grating, her courage failed her; she dared not accuse her husband and her sister to a stranger. So she spoke confusedly and vaguely, and the good priest could give her only vague consolation.
She abandoned herself to a complete moral prostration. She passed long hours motionless in her easy-chair, or on her bed, in a sort of stupor and often was absent from table, on one pretext or another.
"The Signora came home an hour ago, and is lying down," said Cesare's man-servant.