They talked of their love. She was sure she had loved him before he loved her, and when he said that he had loved her always, she protested in that case he did not love her at all.
They rose at length to close the windows, and side by side, his arm about her waist, her head leaning lightly on his shoulder, they stood for a moment looking out. The mother of cities lay below in its lightsome whiteness, and over the ridge of its encircling hills the glow of the departing sun was rising in vaporous tints of amber and crimson into the transparent blue, with the dome of St. Peter's, like a balloon ready to rise into a celestial sky.
"A storm is coming," he said, looking at the colours in the sunset.
"It has come and gone," she whispered, and then his arm folded closer about her waist.
It took him half-an-hour to say adieu. After the last kiss and the last handshake, their arms would stretch out to the utmost limit, and then close again for another and another and yet another embrace.
XV
When at length Rossi was gone, Roma ran into her bedroom to look at her face in the glass. The golden complexion was heightened by a bright spot on either cheek, and a teardrop was glistening in the corner of each of her eyes.
She went back to the boudoir. David Rossi was no longer there, but the room seemed to be full of his presence. She sat in the chair again, and again she stood by the window. At length she opened her desk and wrote a letter:—
"Dearest,—You are only half-an-hour gone, and here I am sending this letter after you, like a handkerchief you had forgotten. I have one or two things to say, quite matter-of-fact and simple things, but I cannot think of them sensibly for joy of the certainty that you love me. Of course I knew it all the time, but I couldn't be at ease until I had heard it from your own lips; and now I feel almost afraid of my great happiness. How wonderful it seems! And, like all events that are long expected, how suddenly it has happened in the end. To think that a month ago—only a little month—you and I were both in Rome, within a mile of each other, breathing the same air, enclosed by the same cloud, kissed by the same sunshine, and yet we didn't know it!
"Soberly, though, I want you to understand that I meant all I said so savagely about going on with your work, and not letting your anxiety about my welfare interfere with you. I am really one of the women who think that a wife should further a man's aims in life if she can; and if she can't do that, she should stand aside and not impede him. So go on, dear heart, without fear for me. I will take care of myself, whatever occurs. Don't let one hour or one act of your life be troubled by the thought of what would happen to me if you should fall. Dearest, I am your beloved, but I am your soldier also, ready and waiting to follow where my captain calls: