The future was shining in the brilliant eyes with the radiance of an unseen sunrise.
"Dear Elena?"
"Ye-s."
"Do you think it will seem long to wait until he comes?"
"Don't talk like that, Donna Roma."
"Why not? It's only a little sooner or later, you know. Will it?"
Elena had turned aside, and Roma answered herself.
"I don't. I think it will pass like a dream—like going to bed at night and awaking in the morning. And then both together—there."
She took a long deep breath of unutterable joy.
"Oh," she said, "that I may sleep until he comes—knowing all, forgiving everything, loving me the same as before, and every cruel thought dead and gone and forgotten."