“For your sake it is best we should part,” she answered hoarsely.
“Why? I cannot understand your meaning,” he cried. “We love one another. What do you fear?”
“I fear myself.”
“Yourself?” he echoed. Then, drawing her closer to him, he exclaimed in a low intense voice, “Come, Gemma, confide in me. Tell we why you desire to remain here; why you are acting so strangely to-day.”
She rose slowly from the divan, a slim, woeful figure, and swayed unevenly as she answered—
“No, Nino. Do not ask me.”
“But you still love me?” he demanded earnestly. “Have you not just expressed readiness to marry me?”
“True,” she replied, pale and trembling. “I will marry you if you remain here in Livorno. But if you leave—if you leave, then we must part.”
“My journey is absolutely necessary,” he declared. “If it were not, I should certainly remain with you.”
“In a week, or a fortnight at most, you can return, I suppose? Till then, I shall remain awaiting you.”