'Because they will not allow it.'
'Who will not allow it?'
'They.' And, pointing with her finger, she indicated Rome and the Piazza del Popolo, where the carnival fever was at its height.
'But you do not know who they are.'
'They are our conscience: I could never endure doing wrong for the sake of love.'
'You do not love,' he bitterly remarked.
'Perhaps,' she said, lost in contemplation of Monte Mario.
'Come away, come away,' he repeated, seized with a spasm of repentance, and desirous of drawing her away from the spectacle of the crowd.
Indeed, as she turned her back upon the panorama of Rome, her face cleared, and her thoughts seemed to flow in a brighter channel. The great peace of the Pincian hill, the solitude, the first breath of spring, the sweet afternoon in the green, the tepid air, the looks of love and respect he bestowed upon her, the fidelity which he manifested, the amorous reverence with which he spoke to her, made her forget the tumult and the shouting of the carnival-smitten town, made her forget that another world existed besides the country, besides spring, besides love.
He understood—oh yes—that a little of that soul was his, that it inclined towards him, in that deserted place, in the presence of the foliage, the falling waters of the fountain, the brazen, open horizon. But he divined that some of that feminine soul escaped him, that most of that heart was closed against him.