"For my life-time, perhaps! Such heirlooms revert to the family. I look upon them as a property entrusted to my keeping."
"Give me the ornaments," cried Baluzzi, taking hold quickly.
"Impossible," replied Giulia, paling. "They are my wedding jewels for tomorrow."
"Haha," laughed Baluzzi. "And you do not fear that these sparkling stones should scorch your hair, or change themselves into little snakes, such as play around the heads of the Furies? I have a great undertaking in prospect, besides, I have much money to pay in Russia. I offer you the choice: give me the diadem or I remain. I shall expose you before all the world, and assert my rights."
Giulia looked once more imploringly at him. Her eye dropped. She was weary of the endless torture.
"Cease! I beseech you, Baluzzi! What shall I say? How excuse myself?"
"Invent a robber. You are inventive enough. A lie, more or less, cannot matter to you, and this is not the worst," added he, scornfully.
"Oh, this torture, this humiliation! Am I not a cowardly woman? Where is my pride, where is my strength? Have you not appeared as one come to warn me, to call to me, 'So far, and no farther! Cease, cease from your reckless game!' And I have not courage to resign, standing before supreme happiness, not the courage of truth, not the courage to speak one single word, to avoid an act of infamous sacrilege! Unworthy struggling, and cheating! That is the greatest humiliation. In open confession, in the lowest abnegation, before universal repudiation, there would still be sublimity! A voice would cry to me, 'You have done rightly,' and above my head I should hear the fluttering of the wings of my life's good genii who have long since forsaken me."
She seemed to be speaking to herself! Eagerly Baluzzi awaited the decisive result of this monologue, at the same time with his eyes devouring the diamonds in Giulia's hand.
"I cannot," cried she suddenly, striking her brow with her clenched hand. "I am too weak, too powerless! Duty's command appears like a horrible spectre that gives me up to boundless misery, while under the spell of criminal silence an ardently longed-for happiness beckons to me. Pity, pity!"