'Just because—I don't wish to see him. Send him away. He must go away.'
'Bianca Maria, remember he is your father.'
'Look here—listen,' she said, pulling him nearer to her, so that she could speak lower. 'He is my father,' she whispered; then, with a smothered fear and an immense bitterness, 'but he has killed me!'
'Do not speak like that,' he replied, turning his head the other way that she might not see his feelings.
'I tell you I am dying through him. I am not raving, you know; I am in my senses,' she replied, opening her eyes wide with that babyish trick of dying children that drives mothers mad with grief.
He shook his head, as if he could not tell what to do nor what to say.
'Send him away!' she insisted, in a rage, with the fatal outbursting fury of meningitis.
'I cannot do it, Bianca Maria....'
'If you do not send him away yourself, I will get up and shriek out to him to go away, never to come before me again—never, for the future: do you hear?'
'Wait a moment,' he said, as he made up his mind, resigned.