Page:Her Roman Lover (Frothingham, 1911).djvu/91

 over the borderland of her experience, something very strong and strange. Yet she found the power to deny him.

“I cannot go with you,” she said. “You must know that I cannot.”

“How should I know such a thing?” And he asked her again, urging her with a strength and eloquence that vibrated along the nerves of her spirit; but she knew what going alone with him to the Roman Campagna would mean: Gino Curatulo would never submit to the constraint a Northern man under the same circumstances would put upon himself; so she continued to deny him, and suddenly he was silent, neither asking her again nor speaking at all. She did not know how deeply he was hurt until she saw that there were tears in his dark and rather heavy eyes; and, partly because she was very tender-hearted, partly because he had moved her more vitally than he himself guessed, she was near to crying herself as they turned and, joined by Margaret, walked through the long nave to the door.

When they came out upon the stone terraces of steps that lead down to the immense piazza with its curved enclosing wings of colonnades, it was just after sunset and very cold. A tramontana blew from over the mountains, bending the waters of the