"I do not deceive them; I am silent"—and he smiled slowly.
"And what if one of them, more passionate, were to fall in love with you, and you seriously with her, Lucio?"
"That would be very serious indeed," murmured Lucio sadly.
"In fact, you are bound for ever, Lucio?" asked Vittorio, with melancholy.
"Yes; for ever," he affirmed, with that inexpressive voice of his, as if declaring an irrefutable fact.
A great gust of icy wind caught them, causing them to shudder and tremble with the cold. The great wall was passed, still a few minutes more and they would find themselves at the hill of the Maloja. The sky was quite white with little white clouds on one side, because the moon was passing behind them, while about the Margna—the great mountain with twin peaks nearly always covered with snow—the clouds had become black and threatening with rain and storm.
"Vittorio, Vittorio," exclaimed Lucio Sabini, in an altered voice; "adultery is a land of madness, of slavery and death. Don't give your youth and life to it as I have given mine, even to my last day. Beatrice and I have been intoxicated with happiness, but we are two unfortunates. I was twenty-five then, Vittorio, and she was three years older; but we never thought that we should throw away our every good, that is the one, the great, the only good—liberty! We are lost, Beatrice and I, in every way, both in our social life and in our consciences, not through remorse for our sin—no, for that was dear to us—but because of the ashes and poison it contains."
"Haven't you tried to free yourselves?" asked Vittorio timidly.
"I tried, but I was unsuccessful. Beatrice is older than I am," said Lucio gloomily, "and the idea of being left horrifies her."