Whosoever Shall Offend Part 20

"We will go home," Regina answered. "I do not want any supper to-night."

They reached their hotel. Regina tossed her hat upon a chair in the sitting-room and drew Marcello to the light, holding him before her, and scrutinising his face with extraordinary intensity. Suddenly her hands dropped from his shoulders.

"She was right; you are ill. Who is this lady that knows your face better than I?"

She asked the question in a tone of bitterness and self-reproach.

"The Contessa dell' Armi," Marcello answered, with a shade of reluctance.

"And the girl?" asked Regina, in a flash of intuition.

"Her daughter Aurora." He turned away, lit a cigarette, and rang the bell.

Regina bit her lip until it hurt her, for she remembered how often he had p.r.o.nounced that name in his delirium, many months ago. She could not speak for a moment. A waiter came in answer to the bell, and Marcello ordered something, and then sat down. Regina went to her room and did not return until the servant had come back and was gone again, leaving a tray on the table.

"What is the matter?" asked Marcello in surprise, as he caught sight of her face.

She sat down at a little distance, her eyes fixed on him.

"I am a very wicked woman," she said, in a dull voice.

"You?" Marcello laughed and filled the gla.s.ses.

"I am letting you kill yourself to amuse me," Regina said. "I am a very, very wicked woman. But you shall not do it any more. We will go away at once."

"I am perfectly well," Marcello answered, holding out a gla.s.s to her; but she would not take it.

"I do not want wine to-night," she said. "It is good when one has a light heart, but my heart is as heavy as a stone. What am I good for?

Kill me. It will be better. Then you will live."

"I should have died without you long ago. You saved my life."

"To take it again! To let you consume yourself, so that I may see the world! What do I care for the world, if you are not well? Let us go away quickly."

"Next week, if you like."

"No! To-morrow!"

"Without waiting to hear Melba?"

"Yes--to-morrow!"

"Or Sarah Bernhardt in Sardou's new play?"

"To-morrow! To-morrow morning, early! What is anything compared with your getting well?"

"And your new summer costume that Doucet has not finished? How about that?"

Marcello laughed gaily and emptied his gla.s.s. But Regina rose and knelt down beside him, laying her hands on his.

"We must go to-morrow," she said. "You shall say where, for you know what countries are near Paris, and where there are hills, and trees, and waterfalls, and birds that sing, where the earth smells sweet when it rains, and it is quiet when the sun is high. We will go there, but you know where it is, and how far."

"I have no doubt Settimia knows," laughed Marcello. "She knows everything."

But Regina's face was grave, and she shook her head slowly.

"What is the use of laughing?" she asked. "You cannot deceive me, you know you cannot! I deceived myself and was blind, but my eyes are open now, and I can only see the truth. Do you love me, Marcello?"

His eyes looked tired a moment ago, even when he laughed, but the light came into them now. He breathed a little faster and bent forward to kiss her. She could feel the rising pulse in his thin hands. But she leaned back as she knelt, and pressed her lips together tightly.

"Not that," she said, after they had both been motionless ten seconds.

"I don't mean that! Love is not all kisses. There is more. There are tears, but there is more too. There is pain, there is doubting, there is jealousy, and more than that! There is avarice also, for a woman who loves is a miser, counting her treasure when others sleep. And she would kill any one who robbed her, and that is murder. Yet there is more, there are all the mortal sins in love, and even then there is worse. For there is this. She will not count her own soul for him she loves, no, not if the saints in Paradise came down weeping and begging her to think of her salvation. And that is a great sin, I suppose."

Marcello looked at her, thinking that she was beautiful, and he said nothing.

"But perhaps a man cannot love like that," she added presently. "So what is the use of my asking you whether you love me? You love Aurora too, I daresay! Such as your man's love is, and of its kind, you have enough for two!"

Marcello smiled.

"I do not love Aurora now," he said.

"But you have, for you talked to her in your fever, and perhaps you will again, or perhaps you wish to marry her. How can I tell what you think?

She is prettier than I, for she has fair hair. I knew she had. I hate fair women, but they are prettier than we dark things ever are. All men think so. What does it matter? It was I that saved your life when you were dying, and the people meant you to die. I shall always have that satisfaction, even when you are tired of me."

"Say never, then!"

"Never? Yes, if I let you stay here, you will not have time to be tired of me, for you will grow thinner and whiter, and one day you will be breathing, and not breathing, and breathing a little again, and then not breathing at all, and you will be lying dead with your head on my arm. I can see how it will be, for I thought more than once that you were dead, just like that, when you had the fever. No! If I let that happen you will never be tired of me while you are alive, and when you are dead Aurora cannot have you. Perhaps that would be better. I would almost rather have it so."

"Then why should we go away?" asked Marcello, smiling a little.

"Because to let you die would be a great sin, much worse than losing my soul for you, or killing some one to keep you. Don't you see that?"

"Why would it be worse?"

"I do not know, but I am sure it would. Perhaps because it would be losing your soul instead of mine. Who knows? It is not in the catechism.

The catechism has nothing about love, and I never learned anything else.

But I know things that I never learned. Every woman does. How? The heart says them, and they are true. Where shall we go to-morrow?"

"Do you really want to leave Paris?"

To impress upon him that she was in earnest Regina squeezed his hands together in hers with such energy that she really hurt him.

"What else have I been saying for half an hour?" she asked impatiently.

"Do you think I am playing a comedy?" She laughed. "Remember that I have carried you up and down stairs in my arms," she added, "and I could do it again!"

"If you insist on going away, I will walk," Marcello answered with a laugh.

She laughed too, as she rose to her feet. He put out his hand to fill his gla.s.s again, but she stopped him.