Between the murmurs and groans of the unhappy girl the man heard the alarm of the dog, while the moon now gained its full power and illuminated the whole room. And now before he could collect himself or speak a word he felt her arms about his neck again, her mouth on his throat and hot tears falling over his face.
“Do not go to your death, Filippo!” sobbed the poor girl. “If you stay here with me, who will ever find you? Let them talk as they will, the crowd of murderers, the cowardly wretches, more detestable than the wolves of the Apennines! Yes,” she said, and looked up at him through her streaming tears, “you will stay. The Madonna has sent you to me—that I might save you. Filippo, I do not know what angry words I spoke, but that they were angry I felt by the icy contraction here at my heart from which the words relieved me. Forgive me for that. It puts me in hell to think that love can be forgotten and loyalty trodden under foot. Let us sit down here and consider the matter. Do you wish a new house? We will build one. A change of company? We will send every one away, even Nina, even the old dog shall go. And if you think then they may betray you—why we will go ourselves, even to-day, now. I know all the paths, and before the sun rises we will be deep among the ravines on our way toward the north, and wandering, wandering to Genoa, to Venice, wherever you will.”
“Stop!” said he sternly. “It is enough folly. You can not be my wife, Fenice. Even if they do not kill me to-morrow, it will not be for long, for I know how I am in their toils.” Quietly but firmly he released his neck from her arms.
“See! my child,” he continued, “things are unhappy enough as they stand, and we ought not to make them worse through want of reason. Perhaps when you hear of my death later, your eyes will be resting on a husband and beautiful children, and you will be thankful the dead man of this night had more wisdom than you, even as in that other night you had more wisdom than he. Let me go to rest now. Go you, too, and take care we do not see each other again in the morning. You have a good reputation, as I learnt from my contrabbandieri on the way here. Should we see each other in the morning, and should you make a scene—you understand, my child? And now, good night, good night, Fenice!” Then once more he begged her earnestly for her hand. But she did not give it to him. She looked absolutely white in the moonlight; her brows and lowered eyelashes all the darker.
“Have I not sufficiently atoned for having enjoyed seven years ago one long night of too much happiness? And now he wills that this thousand-times accursed happiness shall make me unhappy again, and this time for the length of an eternity? No, no, no! I will never let him go! I would dishonor myself before all men if he should go away and die.”
“Did you not hear,” he broke in sharply, “that it is my will to rest? Why do you talk with such infatuation, making yourself ill? If you can not feel that honor must tear me from you, then you can never be fit for me. I am no doll on your lap to be fondled and joked with. My paths I have marked out before me, and they are too narrow for two. Show me the hide on which I am to pass the night and then—let us forget each other!”
“Though you drive me from you with blows, I will not leave you! If death places himself between us, with these good arms I will save you from him. In death and life—you are mine, Filippo!”
“Be still!” he cried aloud. The color rose suddenly to his forehead, as with both arms he pushed the impetuous figure from him. “Be still! And now it is over—now and forever. Am I a thing that can be dragged to any one that calls for it—to any one whose eyes take a fancy to it? You have been sighing for me for seven years—does that give you the right to make me untrue to myself in the eighth? If you wished to corrupt me, your method was badly chosen. Seven years ago I loved you because you were different from what you are to-day. If you had flown to my neck then, and had hoped to win my heart by boldness, I would have set boldness against boldness, as I do to-day! Now, all is over between us, and I know that the pity that moved me before was not love. For the last time, where is my room?”
Sharply and coldly he said this, and in the silence that followed he felt pain at the tone of his own voice. Yet he added not a word, wondering in the stillness that she took it so much more calmly than he had feared. Far rather would he now have soothed some stormy outburst of her sorrow with kinder words. But she went past him coldly, threw open a heavy wooden door not far from the hearth, in silence pointed to the iron bolt, and then returned to the hearth again.
He entered and bolted the door behind him. Yet for a moment he stood standing by the door, to listen to what she might be doing. But there was not a sound of life in the room and not a stir could be heard in the whole house save the restlessness of the dog, the pawing of the horses in their stalls, and the whistling of the wind without which was fast driving away the last streaks of the mist. The moon in all its glory was now shining in the heavens, and it flooded the room as Filippo drew a great bunch of heather out of a hole in the wall which served as a window. He now plainly saw he was in Fenice’s room. There against the wall stood her neat, narrow bed, near it a chest unlocked, a small table, a little wooden bench, the walls hung with pictures of saints and madonnas, a little bowl of holy water under the crucifix by the door.