An old guide approached her, and offered to show her the ruins. She followed him mechanically. They traversed the Street of Hope, the Street of Fortune, where there are the deep marks of carriage wheels in the stone pavement; they entered houses and shops and squares; she looked at everything with vacant eyes. Twice the guide said: "Now let us visit the Street of Tombs and the Villa of Diomedes." Twice she had answered: "Later on; by-and-by."
Two or three times she had sat down on a stone to rest; and then her poor old guide had sat down also, at a distance, and let his head fall forward on his breast, and dozed. She was strangely fatigued; she had exhausted her forces in making the journey hither; the tumult of emotion she had gone through had prostrated her. Now she felt utterly alone and abandoned—a poor, unfortunate creature bearing through this dead city a heavy burden of solitude and weariness: and when, after a long rest, she got up to go on again, a great sigh broke from her lips.
But somehow she must pass the time, and so she went on. She climbed to the top of the Amphitheatre, seeking to devour the minutes that separated her from two o'clock.
Presently the old man said, for the third time: "Now let us visit the Street of Tombs and the Villa of Diomedes."
"Let us go," she responded.
The hours had passed at last; only one more remained. With her watch in her hand, as the guide pointed out to her the magnificence of the Villa of Diomedes, she was saying to herself, "Now Giustino is leaving Naples."
Impatient, no longer able to endure the voice or presence of the old man, no longer able to hide her own perturbation, she paid and dismissed him. He hesitated, reluctant to leave her, telling her that it was forbidden to make sketches, and, above all, to carry anything away; but he said it timidly, humbly, knowing very well that it was needless to fear any such infractions from this pale girl with the dreamy eyes. And he moved off, slowly, slowly, turning back every now and then to see what she was doing. She sat down on a stone in front of the tomb of the "sweet freed-woman," Nevoleia Tyche, and waited there, her hands in her lap, her head bent; nor did she look up when a party of English passed her, accompanied by a guide. This last hour seemed interminable to her; it seemed covered by a great shadow, in which all things were obscured. The name of Giustino, constantly repeated, was like a single ray of light. She neither heard nor saw what was going on round about her; her consciousness of the external world was put out.
Suddenly a shadow fell between her and the grey tomb of the freed-woman. She looked up, and saw Giustino standing before her, gazing down on her with an infinite despairing tenderness.
Anna, unable to speak, gave him her hand, and rose. And a smile of happiness, like a great light, shone from her eyes, and a warm colour mantled her cheeks. Giustino had never seen her so beautiful. In an ecstasy of joy, feeling all her doubts die within her, feeling all the glory of her love spring to full life again, Anna could not understand why there was an expression of sorrow on Giustino's face.
"Do you love me—a great deal?"