She laid her hand upon his sleeve pleadingly. “But if I can bear it, if I feel that it is the right thing to do? Won’t that help at all, Vittorio?”
“But how can I know that you are not sacrificing yourself again? There is something mysterious about this. You are keeping something back, Anne.”
She turned from him with a hopeless shrug and leaned her elbows on the balustrade.
“There’s nothing mysterious about it, Vittorio. Alexis is alone in the world. He needs me and I am fond of him.”
He went towards her impulsively. “Fond of him! You call that love? Fond, is that a word to build a marriage upon?”
“I’m only quoting you. Haven’t you told me many times that love wasn’t necessary to a happy marriage?”
“If I did I was lying and you knew it, my Anne, or you would have taken me a dozen times over. And I was always patient because I felt that love would come to you finally. And lately, I was so happy, happier than for years. Your letters were so wonderful. I could hear you calling to me between the lines. I felt the time was rapidly approaching when you would awaken to your need of me. Oh, Anne, you’re not a capricious woman. You couldn’t have written to me like that just out of caprice. I feel I have the right to ask for an explanation.”
She turned towards him blindly as he leaned beside her on the parapet. Their groping hands met and clung. “You have a right to all I can tell you, Vittorio.” Her fingers trembled in his strong clasp. “But there isn’t much to say. When I wrote you I thought I was free. And—then he came—and I discovered that I had made a mistake. So I telegraphed to you not to come.”
The grasp upon her hand tightened nervously. “You mean you discovered that it was he and not I whom you loved after all?”
“Perhaps,” her voice came muffled.