well educated.  That was all.  It did not seem natural to him that she should call him “the master” in that tone.  He knew that she was not his equal, but somehow it was a little humiliating to have to own it, and he often wished that she were.  Often, not always; for he had never been sure that he should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so well born.  He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he had lost his hold on himself, and was content with mere enjoyment from day to day.  He could no longer imagine living without her, and while he was conscious that the present state of things could not last very long, he could not face the problem of the future.

He did not answer at once, and she sat quite still, almost closing her eyes.

“Why should you be displeased because I am going to see Folco?” he asked after a while.

“He comes to take you away from me,” she answered, without moving.

“That is absurd!” cried Marcello, annoyed by her tone.

“No.  It is true.  I know it.”

“You are unreasonable.  He is the best friend I have in the world.  Do you expect me to promise that I will never see him again?”

“You are the master.”

She repeated the words in the same dull tone, and her expression did not change in the least.  Marcello moved and sat up opposite to her, clasping his hands round his knees.  He was very thin, but the colour was already coming back to his face, and his eyes did not look tired.

“Listen to me,” he said.  “You must put this idea out of your head.  It was Folco who found the little house in Trastevere for you.  He arranged everything.  It was he who got you Settimia.  He did everything to make you comfortable, and he has never disturbed us once when we have been together.  He never so much as asked where I was going when I used to go down to see you every afternoon.  No friend could have done more.”

“I know it,” Regina answered; but still there was something in her tone which he could not understand.

“Then why do you say that he means to separate us?”

Regina did not reply, but she opened her eyes and looked into Marcello’s long and lovingly.  She knew something that he did not know, and which had haunted her long.  When Folco had come to the bedside in the hospital, she had seen the abject terror in his face, the paralysing fear in his attitude, the trembling limbs and the cramped fingers.  It had only lasted a moment, but she could never forget it.  A child would have remembered how Folco looked then, and Regina knew that there was a mystery there which she could not understand, but which frightened her when she thought of it.  Folco had not looked as men do who see one they love called back from almost certain death.

“What are you thinking?” Marcello asked, for her deep look stirred his blood, and he forgot Folco and everything in the world except the beautiful creature that sat there, within his reach, in the lonely pine-woods.