"Away, do not touch me!"
"And if I do? I am safe from your cries for help!"
"That you are not," cried Giulia in supreme excitement, "not even if I must let my shame resound through the house with the alarm bell! Rather than rest in your arms, rather than follow you and obey that vile control which your right and will exercise, rather would I fall crushed upon my knees before every one, confess the incredible, pray for mercy, and then seek and find death. You know me! I dare do much, I dare do what is unheard of! With bold hand I will rob myself of my own happiness. He who dares that is prepared for all! Beside the summit there is an abyss and no other path--least of all no other path in common with you!"
Giulia's wild determination made an impression upon Baluzzi; he knew those convulsively closed lips, those knitted eyebrows, those rigid glances; he knew that at such moments she was capable of extremities.
What, then, was left to him? The sensation of gratified revenge, a mere shadow of recollection--but not the bliss of the rack, and what his passion, his avarice, might perhaps still expect of the future, would then be buried for evermore.
He stopped, and hesitated.
Then, as Giulia rose from her knees in haughty anger, the light of the lamp swept across her head-dress, so that the diamonds flashed and quivered, and a dream-like firework of precious stones seemed to scintillate upon her head.
The Italian was suddenly dazzled and enraptured with the ornament which he had, indeed, perceived immediately upon his entrance, but which he had not estimated at its full value.
His eyes wandered from the coronet to the strings of pearls, down to the bracelets; they passed on to the open jewel casket on the table whence a brilliancy betokening great promise shone in the dim light.
Giulia followed his gaze, his expression had entirely changed: the glow of passion, the madness of revenge had given place to mute greed, to avarice, that sought gratification, not from the animate, but the inanimate objects. As if spell-bound his glance hung upon the brilliants. A considerable pause ensued, Giulia imbibed new courage.