She stood still by the table watching him fearfully. “Filippo, I hoped—I thought you would take me away.”
“It is impossible. I cannot even see you again until after Christmas. It will be safer—better not. But in January I will come to Lucca, and then—”
He hesitated, weighing his words, weighing his thought and his desire.
“And then?” she said.
He looked at her closely, deliberately, divining the beauty that was half hidden from him. Her parted lips were lovely, and the texture of her white skin was satin smooth as the petals of a rose; there was no fault in the pure oval of her face, in the line of her black brows. He could see no flaw in her now, and he believed that she would still seem unsurpassably fair after a lapse of time.
“Then, if you still wish it, I will take you away. You shall have a villa at San Remo—”
“I understand,” she said hurriedly, and she covered her face with her hands.
She had hoped to be the Princess Tor di Rocca, and he had offered to keep her still as his amica. Presently, if she wished it and it still suited him, he would set her feet on the way that led to the streets. “Then if you wish it—” To her the insult seemed to lie in the proposed delay. She loved him, and she had no love for virtue. She loved him, and if he had urged her to go with him on the instant she would have yielded easily. But she must await his convenience; next year, perhaps; and meanwhile she must go to Lucca, she must be married to the other man.
She was crying, and tears oozed out between her fingers and dripped on the floor. “He is horrible to me,” she said brokenly.
Filippo rose then and came to her; he loved her in his way, and she moved him as no woman had done yet.