"My love; tell me if you ever loved me, if you still love me. I shall always love you.—LILIAN."
Lucio read aloud the few simple, frank words, the tender question, the deep promise. And all the amorous life of the Engadine reappeared to him, in all its most intimate and invincible attraction. His whole soul reeled, his heart broke.
"Tell her how much I loved her, Miss May; tell her how much I still love her; that far-away and all the time I shall always be hers. Tell her that; it is the truth. I have never deceived her. That is the answer, the only answer."
Thus he besought May Ford, with anxious eyes and trembling lips, in a cry that arose from the innermost depths of his heart, that the cry might reach even to Lilian.
"I can't tell her that," replied Miss Ford gravely, "I will not tell her that."
"But why not; if it be the truth? Why not?"
"If I tell her, Signor Sabini, she can never forget you, she will never cease to love you. She must never know that you love her."
"Indeed, indeed!" he replied sadly, "and how could she ever understand, she who is innocent, simple, and pure, that I can love her and yet fly from her; that I can love her and remain with Beatrice Herz? That is my inexorable condemnation—Lilian can never understand."
"Signor Sabini, tell me the only thing necessary for her to forget; something short and convincing that can turn Lilian."
Miss Ford sighed, as if she had talked too much and expressed too much.