"But that is wrong. We cannot stay. We cannot stay like that----"
Angrily he wheeled about. "Scandal?" he said sharply. "What the hell scandal is there?"
His indignation at the words could not dispel her terror. But it was something to have him so hot her champion.
"Let 'em talk," he said curtly. "We can't help it."
She put a hand to her throat as if to still that throbbing pulse there that impeded speech.
"I know we cannot help it. But we cannot--not give them so much to talk of. We can be trying to return----"
"Don't be a goose, Ri-Ri!" he broke in sharply.
He was a man. He did not understand the full agony. . . . Desperately Maria Angelina wondered as to her reception. She had no parallel in Italian society. The thing could not happen in Italian society. A girl, a well born girl, rambling the woods all night with her fiancé!
She wondered if the announcement of their engagement instantly upon their return would appease the world. Of course, there would always be the story. As long as she lived there would be the story. But as Johnny's wife, triumphant, assured, she could afford to ignore it.
At her stillness Johnny had looked about, and something infinitely drooping and forlorn in the vague outlines of her small figure made its softening appeal.
His voice changed. "Don't you worry, little girl," he told her soothingly, "I'll take care of you."
"Ah, yes," she said faintly, "but what can we do? Had it better be at once----?"
"Marriage?" Even in the dimness she saw that he raised his head, his chin stiffening, his whole outline hardening.
"What are you talking about?" he said very roughly.
"About--about our marriage," she repeated trembling, and then, at something in his hardness and his grimness, "Why, what did you mean----? Must it not be soon?"
A dreadful, deliberate silence engulfed her words.
"Who said anything about marriage?" defiantly he demanded. "I never asked you to marry me."
"I never asked you to marry me," he repeated very stiffly.
The crash of all her worlds sounded in Maria Angelina's ears. An aghast bewilderment flooded her soul.
Pitiably she stammered, "Why it--it was understood, was it not? You cared--you--you----"
She could not put into words the memories that beset her stricken consciousness. But the cheeks that had felt his kiss flamed with a sudden burning scarlet.