“Yes—yes!” she faltered, interrupting me. “I know. I loved you, but I was foolish—very foolish.”
“Why foolish?”
She made no reply, but burst suddenly into tears.
Tenderly I placed my arm about her waist. What could I do, save to try and comfort her? In the three years that had passed she had grown into womanhood, and yet she still preserved that sweet girlishness that, in these go-ahead days, is so refreshing and attractive in a woman in her early twenties.
In those calm moments in the glorious Sicilian sundown I recollected those days when at seventeen she had admitted her love for me, and we were happy. Visions of that blissful past arose before me—and then the crushing blow I had received prior to our parting.
“Vivi, tell me,” I whispered at last, “why do you still hold aloof from me?”
“Because I—I must.”
“But why? You surely are now your own mistress?”
Her eyes were fixed upon me again very gravely for some moments in silence. Then she answered in a low voice—
“But I can never marry you. It is impossible.”