"Oh yes, Donna Roma is coming, and if you will...."
"That's charming! After the opera we'll have supper at the Grand Hotel. Good-day!" said the Princess, and then in a low voice at the door, "I leave you to your delightful duties, my dear. You are not looking so well, though. Must be the scirocco. My poor dear husband used to suffer from it shockingly. Adieu!"
Roma was less confused but just as nervous when she settled to her work afresh.
"I've been thinking all night long of the story you told me yesterday," she said. "No, that way, please—eyes as before—thank you! About your old friend, I mean. He was a good man—I don't doubt that—but he made everybody suffer. Not only his father and mother, but his wife also. Has anybody a right to sacrifice his flesh and blood to a work for the world?"
"When a man has taken up a mission for humanity his kindred must reconcile themselves to that," said Rossi.
"Yes, but a child, one who cannot be consulted. Your friend's daughter, for example. She was to lose everything—her father himself at last. How could he love her? I suppose you would say he did love her."
"Love her? He lived for her. She was everything on earth to him, except the one thing to which he had dedicated his life."
A half-smile parted her lovely lips.
"When her mother was gone he was like a miser who had been robbed of all his jewels but one, and the love of father, mother, and wife seemed to gather itself up in the child."