'Can I leave you like this?'
'It does not matter; someone will help me. Fly, or you will be arrested.'
'Adieu,' he said, feeling relieved. 'We will see each other again at Pellegrini Hospital; I will come and ask for you.'
'Yes, yes,' she whispered, shutting her eyes and opening them again. 'Fly! Adieu.'
He rushed off, too, very quickly, without looking back; she followed him with her glance, half sitting up, holding the handkerchief to her forehead, while the blood flowed down her neck and shoulders into her lap. She was alone. She was holding her head down in her great weakness, when some peasants, a magistrate from Capodimonte with some police, and a gardener from the Royal Palace grounds came up at the same moment. They had to put her into a chair that the Barbassone inn-keeper had brought out, and carry her. They went slowly, the same road as she had come. She lay with her legs swinging against the chair, her arms limp, her head going hither and thither, and at every shake of the chair spilling big drops of blood on the ground. Before the inn, where the two tables with wine-stained cloths still stood, the chair was put down.
'Would you like anything?' asked the magistrate, a swarthy man.
'Only a little water to drink,' she said, opening her eyes slowly, as if her eyelids were too heavy.
Meanwhile they put a cold-water bandage on the wound till a cab could be got to take her to Pellegrini Hospital.
'How do you feel?' asked the magistrate. He wanted to go on with the inquiry, as he saw that her strength was failing.
'I feel better; it is nothing.'