She understood, and turned her eyes to the distance; and she saw the quiet room in the hospital, the iron bedstead painted white, the smooth pillow, Marcello’s emaciated head, and Corbario’s face.

“I was thinking how you looked when you were ill,” she answered simply.

The words and the tone broke the soft little spell that had been weaving itself out of her dark eyes.  Marcello drew a short, impatient breath and threw himself on his side again, supporting his head on his hand and looking down at the brown pine-needles.

“You do not know Folco,” he said discontentedly.  “I don’t know why you should dislike him.”

“I will tell you something,” Regina answered.  “When you are tired of me, you shall send me away.  You shall throw me away like an old coat.”

“You are always saying that!” returned Marcello, displeased.  “You know very well that I shall never be tired of you.  Why do you say it?”

“Because I shall not complain.  I shall not cry, and throw myself on my knees, and say, ‘For the love of heaven, take me back!’ I am not made like that.  I shall go, without any noise, and what must be will be.  That is all.  Because I want nothing of you but love, I shall go when you have no more love.  Why should I ask you for what you have not?  That would be like asking charity of the poor.  It would be foolish.  But I shall tell you something else.”

“What?” asked Marcello, looking up to her face again, when she had finished her long speech.

“If any one tries to make me go before you are tired of me, it shall be an evil day for him.  He shall wish that he had not been born into this world.”

“You need not fear,” Marcello said.  “No one shall come between us.”

“Well, I have spoken.  It does not matter whether I fear Signor Corbario or not, but if you like I will tell him what I have told you, when he comes.  In that way he will know.”

She spoke quietly, and there was no murderous light in her eyes, nor any dramatic gesture with the words; but she was a little paler than before, and there was an odd fixedness in her expression, and Marcello knew that she was deeply moved, by the way she fell back into her primitive peasant’s speech, not ungrammatical, but oddly rough and forcible compared with the language of educated society which she had now learned tolerably well from him.

After that she was silent for a while, and then they talked as usual, and the day went by as other days had gone.

On the next afternoon Folco Corbario reached Saint Moritz and sent a note up to Marcello asking him to come down on the following morning.