Whosoever Shall Offend Part 35

he hesitated.

"You intended to go," Aurora said, completing the sentence. "And then you changed your mind."

"Yes. I could not do it. I cannot explain everything."

"I understand without any explanation. I think you did right."

She went back to the fireplace and sat down in the corner of the sofa, leaning far back and stretching out one foot to the fender in an unconscious att.i.tude of perfect grace. In the grey afternoon the firelight began to play in her auburn hair. Now and then she glanced at Marcello with half-closed lids, and there was a suggestion of a smile on her lips. Marcello saw that in her way she was as beautiful as Regina, and he remembered how they had kissed, without a word, when the moon's rays quivered through the trees by the Roman sh.o.r.e, more than two years ago. They had been children then. All at once he felt a great longing to kneel down beside the sofa and throw his arms round her waist and kiss her once again; but at almost the same instant he thought of Regina, waiting for him by the window over there in Trastevere, and he felt the shame rising to his face; and he leaned back in his low chair, clasping his hands tightly over one knee, as if to keep himself from moving.

"Marcello," Aurora began presently, but she got no further.

"Yes?" Still he did not move.

"I have something on my conscience." She laughed low. "No, it is serious!" she went on, as if reproving herself. "I have always felt that everything that has happened to you since we parted that morning by the sh.o.r.e has been my fault."

"Why?" Marcello seemed surprised.

"Because I called you a baby," she said. "If you had not been angry at that, if you had not turned away and left me suddenly--you were quite right, you know--you would not have been knocked down, you would not have wandered away and lost yourself. You would not have lost your memory, or been ill in a strange place, or--or all the rest! So it is all my fault, you see, from beginning to end."

"How absurd!" Marcello looked at her and smiled.

"No. I think it is true. But you have changed very much, Marcello. You are not a boy any longer. You have a will of your own now; you are a man. Do you mind my telling you that?"

"Certainly not!" He smiled again.

"I remember very well what you answered. You said that I should not laugh at you again. And that has come true. You said a good many other things. Do you remember?"

"No. I was angry. What did I say? Everything that happened before I was hurt seems very far off."

"It does not matter," Aurora answered softly. "I am glad you have forgotten, for though I was angry too, and did not care at the time, the things you said have hurt me since."

"I am sorry," Marcello said gently, "very, very sorry. Forgive me."

"It was all my fault, for I was teasing you for the mere fun of the thing. I was nothing but a silly school-girl then."

"Yes. You have changed, too."

"Am I at all what you expected I should be?" Aurora asked, after a moment's silence.

Marcello glanced at her, and clasped his hands over his knee more tightly than ever.

"I wish you were not," he answered in a low voice.

"Don't wish that." Her tone was even lower than his.

Neither spoke again for some time, and they did not look at each other.

But the flames flickering in the small fireplace seemed to be talking, like a third person in the room. Aurora moved at last, and changed her position.

"I am glad that you have quarrelled with your stepfather," she said. "He meant to do you all the harm he could. He meant you to die of the life you were leading."

"You know that?" Marcello looked up quickly.

"Yes. I have heard my mother and Professor Kalmon talking about it when they thought I was not listening. I always pretend that I am not listening when anybody talks about you." She laughed a little. "It is so much simpler," she added, as if to explain. "The Professor said that your stepfather was killing you by inches. Those were his words."

"The Professor never liked him. But he was right. Have you seen him often?"

"Yes." Aurora laughed again. "He always turns up wherever we are, pretending that it is the most unexpected meeting in the world. He is just like a boy!"

"What do you mean? Is he in love with you?"

"With me? No! He is madly in love with my mother! Fancy such a thing!

When he found that we were coming back to Rome he gave up his professorship in Milan, and he has come to live here so as to be able to see her. So I hear them talking a great deal, and he seems to have found out a great many things about your stepfather which n.o.body ever knew. He takes an extraordinary interest in him for some reason or other."

"What has he found out?" asked Marcello.

"Enough to hang him, if people could be hanged in Italy," Aurora answered.

"I should have thought Folco too clever to do anything really against the law," said Marcello, who did not seem much surprised at what she said.

"The Professor believes that it was he that tried to kill you."

"How is that possible?" Marcello asked, in great astonishment. "You would have seen him!"

"I did. You had not been gone three minutes when he came round to the gap in the bank where I was standing. He came from the side towards which I had seen you go. It was perfectly impossible that he should not have met you. The Professor says he must have known that you were there, looking at the storm, but that he did not know that I was with you, and that he was lying in wait for you to strike you from behind. If we had gone back together he would not have shown himself, that's all, and he would have waited for a better chance. If I had only followed you I should have seen what happened."

"That is the trouble," said Marcello thoughtfully. "No one ever saw what happened, and I remember nothing but that I fell forward, feeling that I had been struck on the back of the head. Did you not hear any sound?"

"How could I, in such a gale as was blowing? It all looks dreadfully likely and quite possible, and the Professor is convinced that your stepfather has done some worse things."

"Worse?"

"Yes, because he did not fail in doing them, as he did when he tried to kill you."

"But what must such a man be?" cried Marcello, suddenly breaking out in anger. "What must his life have been in all the years before my mother married him?"

"He was a kind of adventurer in South America. I don't quite know what he did there, but Professor Kalmon has found out a great deal about him from the Argentine Republic, where he lived until he killed somebody and had to escape to Europe. If I were you I would go and see the Professor, since he is in Rome. He lives at No. 16, Via Sicilia. He will tell you a great deal about that man when he knows that you have parted for good."

"I'll go and see him. Thank you. I cannot imagine that he could tell me anything worse than I have already heard."

"Perhaps he may," Aurora answered very gravely.

Then she was silent, and Marcello could not help looking at her as she leaned back in the corner of the sofa. Of all things, at that moment, he dreaded lest he should lose command of himself under the unexpected influence of her beauty, of old memories, of the failing light, of the tender shadows that still lingered under her eyes, of that exquisite small hand that lay idly on the sofa beside her, just within his reach.

He rose abruptly, no longer trusting himself.

"I must be going," he said.

"Already? Why?" She looked up at him and their eyes met.

"Because I cannot be alone with you any longer. I do not trust myself."