Among the many who had come to look their last upon the Odalisque were men who had made free with her poor name, had been unsparing in their utterance of the truth concerning her and ready to drag her down, and some of these moved away now shamefacedly, but more stayed, and one after another took up the words.
“Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea: et a peccato meo munda me.”
Gemma herself had trodden out the fire that consumed her, but who could dare say of the grey cold ashes, “These are altogether vile.”
“Tibi soli peccavi, et malum coram te feci: ut justificeris in sermonibus tuis et vincas cum judicaris.”
She had sinned, and she had been punished; she had suffered fear and shame.
“Asperges me hyssopo et mundabor, lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor.”
There had been some taint in her blood, some flaw in her will.
“Cor mundum crea in me, Deus, et spiritum rectum innova in visceribus meis.”
A dark-eyed slender boy, wearing the green and white and scarlet of his contrade, pushed his way to the front presently. It was Romeo, and he carried a great bunch of magnolia blossoms.
“Oh, signorina,” he said, half crying, “the alfieri and I wanted to give you these because you brought us good luck so that we won the Palio. I little thought—”