He released her instantly. “Well?”
“I must light the lamp,” she said unsteadily. She was afraid now to be alone with him in the dim, starlit room, and she fumbled for the matches. He stood still by the window waiting until the little yellow flame of the lucerna burnt brightly on the floor between them, then he smiled at her, well pleased at her pallor. “You see it would be easy,” he said.
She answered nothing.
“I am going to Naples to-morrow by the afternoon train. Will you come with me? We will go where you like from there, to Capri, or to Sicily; and you will help me to forget, and I will teach you to live.”
There was silence between them for a while. Olive stared with fascinated eyes at this tall, lithe man whose red lucco, falling in straight folds to his feet, became him well. The upper part of his face was in shadow, and she saw only the strong lines of the cleft chin, and the beautiful cruel lips that smiled at her as though they knew what her answer must be.
She was of those who are apt to prefer one hour of troubled joy to the long, grey, eventless years of the women who are said to be happy because they have no history, and it seemed to her that the moment had come when she must make a choice. This love was not what she had dreamed of, longed for; other lips, kinder and more true, should have set their seal on her accomplished womanhood. She knew that this that was offered was a perilous and sharp-edged thing, a bright sheath that held a sword for her heart, and yet that heart sang exultantly as it fluttered like a wild bird against the bars of its cage. It sang of youth and life and joy that cares not for the morrow.
It sang.
Filippo watched her closely and he saw that she was yielding. Her lips parted, and instinctively as he came towards her she closed her eyes so nearly that he saw only a narrow line of blue gleaming between her lashes. But as he laid his hands upon her shoulders something awoke within her, a terror that screamed in her ears.
“I am afraid,” she said brokenly. “Leave me and come back to-morrow morning if you will. I cannot answer you now.”
As he still held her she spoke again. “If I come to you willingly I shall be more worth having, and if you do not go now I will never come. I will drown myself in the Arno.”