Roma saw another phase of her vision. It was filled with a new face, which made her at once happy and unhappy, proud and ashamed. Hitherto the only condition on which she had been able to live with the secret of her life was that she should think nothing about it. Now she was compelled to think, and she was asking herself if it was her duty to confess.
Before she married David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell her she had been more sinned against than sinning, that she had been young and alone at the mercy of an evil man, and that her will had not consented.
"No, no! It is impossible!" she cried aloud, and, startled by the sound of her voice, the Baron came into the room.
"My dear child!" he said, and he picked her up from the floor. "I shall never be able to forgive myself if you take things like this. Every tear you shed will burn my flesh like fire. Come now, dry these beautiful eyes and be calm."
She did not listen to him, but leaning on the stove and fingering with one hand the frame of her father's picture which hung above it, she said:
"I see now that happiness was not for me. There must be some punishment for every sin, however little one has been guilty of it, and perhaps this is God's way of asking for an expiation. It is very, very hard ... it seems more than I deserve ... and heavier than I can bear ... but there is no help for it."
The tears she brushed from her eyes seemed to be gathering in her throat.
"The bitterest part of it is that I must make others suffer for it also. He must suffer who has loved and trusted me. His love for me, my love for him, this has been dragging him down since the first day I knew him. Perhaps he is in prison by this time."
Sobs interrupted her for a moment, and in a caressing tone the Baron tried to comfort her. It was natural that she should feel troubled, very natural and very womanly. But time was the great remedy for human ills. It would heal everything.
"Roma, you have wounded and humiliated and insulted me, but you are the only woman in the world I would give one straw to have. I will make you the wife of the Dictator of Italy, and when all these troubles are over and you are great, and have forgotten what has taken place...."