A sensation of triumphant joy flashed through her, and instantly died away. She wished to cry out, to confess, to say something, she knew not what. But David Leone is dead rang in her ears, and at the same moment she remembered what the impulse had been which brought her to that house.
Then her eyes began to swim and her heart to fail, and she wanted to fly away without uttering another word. She could not speak, he could not speak; they stood together on a precipice where only by silence could they hold their heads.
"Let me go home," she said in a breaking voice, and with downcast head and trembling limbs she stepped to the door.
IX
Reaching the door, she stopped, as if reluctant to leave, and said in a voice still soft, but coming more from within:
"I wished to meet you face to face, but now that I have met you, you are not the man I thought you were."
"Nor you," he said, "the woman I pictured you."
A light came into her eyes at that, and she looked up and said:
"Then you had never seen me before?"
And he answered after a moment: