“Go!” cried Marcello, understanding, and advancing upon him once more.

“I go,” answered Ercole hoarsely.  “Let her live, till you are tired of her, and she dies in a ditch!  I told the monk to say the masses for a female.  They will do for the woman who was killed last night.  One female is worth another, and evil befall them all, as many as they are!  Why did the Eternal Father ever create them?”

He had turned before he spoke the last words, and he went out deliberately, shutting the door behind him.  They heard him go out upon the landing, and they were alone again.  Regina leaned back against the mantelpiece, but Marcello began to walk up and down the room.

“You have seen,” she said, in a rather unsteady voice.  “Now you know of what blood I am, and that what I said was true.  The son of your mother cannot marry the daughter of that man.”

“What have you to do with him?” Marcello asked sharply, stopping in his walk.

But Regina only shook her head, and turned away.  She knew that she was right, and that he knew it too, or would know it soon.

“You will never see him again,” he said.  “Forget that you have seen him at all!”

Again she shook her head, not looking at him.

“You will not forget,” she answered, “and I shall always remember.  He should have killed me, as he meant to do.  It would have been the end.  It would have been better, and quicker.”

“God forbid!”

“Why?  Would it not have been better?”

She came close to him and laid one hand upon his shoulder and gazed into his eyes.  They were full of trouble and pain, and they did not lighten for her; his brow did not relax and his lips did not part.  After a little while she turned again and went back to the fireplace.

“It would have been better,” she said in a low voice.  “I knew it this morning.”

There was silence in the room for a while.  Marcello stood beside her, holding her hand in his, and trying to see her face.  He was very tender with her, but there was no thrill in his touch.  Something was gone that would never come back.

“When all this trouble is over,” he said at last, “you shall go back to the little house in Trastevere, and it will be just as it was before.”

She raised her head rather proudly, as she answered.

“If that could be, it would be now.  You would have taken me in your arms when he was gone, and you would have kissed my eyes and my hair, and we should have been happy, just as it was before.  But instead, you want to comfort me, you want to be kind to me, you want to be just to me, instead of loving me!”

“Regina!  I do love you!  I do indeed!”

He would have put his arms round her to draw her closer to him, in the sudden longing to make her think that there was no change in his love, but she quietly resisted him.

“You have been very good to me, dear,” she said, “and I know you will always be that, whatever comes.  And I am always yours, dear, and you are the master, whenever you choose to come and see me.  For I care for nothing that God has made, except you.  But it will never be just as it used to be.”