They had halted in the broad, gravelled walk, and were alone.
“Listen!” he cried fiercely, as a sudden resolve seized him. “This cannot go on longer, Gemma. I have brought you here to London because I love you, because I hoped to make you my you wife. But you seem determined to keep all the story of your past from me.” Then, recollecting Malvano’s words when they had been shooting together, he added, “If you still refuse to tell me anything, then, much as it grieves me, we must part.”
“Part!” she echoed wildly. “Ah yes, Nino! I knew you would say that. Did I not tell you long, long ago, that it would be impossible for us to marry in the present circumstances? You doubt me? Well, I am scarcely surprised!” and she shuddered pale as death.
“I doubt you because you are never frank with me.”
“I love you, Nino,” she protested with all the ardour of her hot Italian blood as she caught his hand suddenly and raised it to her fevered lips. “You are my very life, for I have no other friend in the world. Surely you have been convinced that my affection is genuine, but I have not deceived you in this!”
“I believe you love me,” he answered coldly, in a half-dubious tone nevertheless.
“Ah no, caro!” she lisped softly, reproachfully, in her soft Tuscan. “Do not speak like that. I cannot bear it. If you can trust me no longer, then let us part. I—I will go back to Italy again.” And she burst into a torrent of hot tears.
“You’ll go back and face the mysterious charge against you?” he asked, with a twinge of sarcasm in his voice, as he drew his hand firmly from hers.
His words caused her to start. She looked him fiercely in the face for an instant, a strange light in her beautiful, tearful eyes, then cried huskily—
“Yes, if you cast me from you, Nino, I care no longer to live. I cannot live without your love.”