The girl hesitated a little over the words, which she nevertheless uttered unbroken, while the tears fell quietly down her face. She seemed to have forgotten the angry words that had passed between her and Ferris, to remember him only as one who had known her mother, while she went on to relate some little facts in the history of her mother's last days; and she rose into a higher, serener atmosphere, inaccessible to his resentment or his regret, as she spoke of her loss. The simple tale of sickness and death inexpressibly belittled his passionate woes, and made them look theatrical to him. He hung his head as they turned at her motion and walked away from the picture of Don Ippolito, and down the stairs toward the street-door; the people before the other Venetian picture had apparently yielded to their craving for lunch, and had vanished.
"I have very little to tell you of my own life," Ferris began awkwardly. "I came home soon after you started, and I went to Providence to find you, but you had not got back."
Florida stopped him and looked perplexedly into his face, and then moved on.
"Then I went into the army. I wrote once to you."
They were now in the lower hall, and near the door.
"Florida," said Ferris, abruptly, "I'm poor and disabled; I've no more right than any sick beggar in the street to say it to you; but I loved you, I must always love you. I--Good-by!"
She halted him again, and "You said," she grieved, "that you doubted me; you said that I had made your life a"--
"Yes, I said that; I know it," answered Ferris.
"You thought I could be such a false and cruel girl as that!"
"Yes, yes: I thought it all, God help me!"
"When I was only sorry for him, when it was you that I"--
"Oh, I know it," answered Ferris in a heartsick, hopeless voice. "He knew it, too. He told me so the day before he died."
"I believe anything you tell me. When I look at you, I can't believe I ever doubted you."
"I know it; but I'm used to being without a reason."
Florida looked gravely at his penitent face, and a brave red color mantled her own, while she advanced an unanswerable argument: "Then what are you going away for?"
The world seemed to melt and float away from between them. It returned and solidified at the sound of the janitor's steps as he came towards them on his round through the empty building. Ferris caught her hand; she leaned heavily upon his arm as they walked out into the street. It was all they could do at the moment except to look into each other's faces, and walk swiftly on.