His sharp, despairing voice broke in tenderness. They began to walk again, side by side.
"You loved her then, Lucio?" asked Vittorio affectionately.
"Yes, I loved her very much; but with a sudden and violent love which made me forget my slavery, my galley, and the rough chain that oppresses me. I loved her, but I ought to have been silent and not have lost my peace and made her lose her peace. Here began my sad sin, Vittorio."
"Did she know nothing about you? Did you tell her nothing?"
"Nothing: she knew nothing; she wished to know nothing. Thus she gave me her heart and her life. I ought to have spoken; I ought to have told her everything. I was so madly in love. I was silent and in my silence deceived her. Ah, what a sin! What a terrible sin was that!"
"Did no one warn her?"
"No one. Her soul was mine without a doubt or a thought, with immense certainty."
"But didn't you in all this understand the danger into which you were both running?"
"I didn't understand," replied Lucio Sabini, tragically. "I didn't understand Lilian Temple's love till after her death."