"It is no present that I make you--it is only what you have a right to, and what I owe you."
"A right to! I have no right to anything from you! If you should happen to meet me in future, do me one kindness--do not look at me, that I may not think that you are putting me in mind of how I have offended you. And now--good night!--and let it be the last."
He laid her handkerchief in the basket, placed the cross on the top of it, and closed the lid. When he looked up and saw her face, he started. Large, heavy tears rolled over her cheeks--she let them run their course unheeded.
"Maria Santissima!" he cried. "Are you ill? You tremble from head to foot!"
"It is nothing," she said--"I will go home:" and turned towards the door. Then a burst of weeping overcame her; she pressed her forehead against the doorpost, and sobbed loud and vehemently. Before he could reach her, she turned suddenly round and cast herself upon his neck. "I cannot, cannot bear it," she cried, and clung to him like a dying man to life. "I cannot bear to hear you saying kind words to me, and telling me to leave you, with all the fault on my conscience! Beat me--trample me under your feet--curse me--or, if it be true that you love me still, after all the ill that I have done you, then take me and keep me, and make of me what you will, but send me not thus away from you----" Fresh vehement sobs interrupted her.
He held her awhile in his arms, stricken dumb. "If I love you still!" he cried. "Holy Madonna! do you think that all my heart's blood has run out of that little wound? Do you not feel it beating in my breast, as if it would spring out, and to you? If you only say it to try me--or from pity to me--there, go, and I will even forget this too! You shall not think that you are indebted to me because you know what I suffer for you."
"No!" she said, firmly, raising her forehead from his shoulder, and gazing passionately in his face with her wet eyes--"I love you; and if I only say it now, I have long feared and fought against it--and now will I change, for I can no longer bear to look at you when you pass me in the street: and now I will kiss you too," she said, "that you may say if you doubt again, 'She has kissed me!' and, Lauretta kisses no one but the man she takes as her husband."
She kissed him thrice, and then freed herself from his arms, and said, "Good night, darling! Now sleep, and heal your hand; and do not come with me, for I fear no one now--but thee!"
Therewith she glided through the doorway, and disappeared in the shadow of the wall; but he looked long through the window, and over the sea, over which all the stars seemed trembling.
The next time the little Padre Curato emerged from the confessional, by which Lauretta had been a long time kneeling, he laughed quietly to himself. "Who would have thought it," he murmured, "that God would so soon have taken pity on this strange heart? And I was blaming myself for not having attacked the demon of obstinacy more fiercely! But our eyes are too short-sighted for the ways of Heaven! And now, may God bless them both, and let me live till Lauretta's eldest boy can go to sea in his father's place."