"Eyes the other way, at the window—thank you!... Did she know who he was?"
"Nobody knew. He was only a poor Italian doctor to all of us in Soho."
"They ... they were ... happy?"
"As happy as love and friendship could make them. And even when poverty came...."
"He became poor—very poor?"
"Very! It got known that Doctor Roselli was a revolutionary, and then his English patients began to be afraid. The house in Soho Square had to be given up at last, and we went into a side street. Only two rooms now, one to the front, the other to the back, and four of us to live in them, but the misery of that woman's outward circumstances never dimmed the radiance of her sunny soul."
Roma's bosom was heaving and her voice was growing thick. "She ... died?"
David Rossi bent his head and spoke in short, jerky sentences. "Her death came at the bitterest moment of want. It was Christmas time. Very cold and raw. We hadn't too much at home to keep us warm. She caught a cold and it settled on her chest. Pneumonia! Only three or four days altogether. She lay in the back room; it was quieter. The doctor nursed her constantly. How she fought for life! She was thinking of her little daughter. Just six years of age at that time, and playing with her doll on the floor."
His voice had enough to do to control itself.
"When it was all over we went into the front room and made our beds on a blanket spread out on the bare boards. Only three of us now—the child with her father, weeping for the mother lying cold the other side of the wall."