When Gaetano saw her trembling with silent sobs, he felt that he too began to shake. A strong and violent emotion took possession of him.
He came close to her once more and laid his hand on her arm. And his voice, when he spoke, was not clear and loud; it was thick and choked with emotion.
“Will you go with me to Argentina if the Madonna does not help you?”
Then Donna Micaela shook him off. She felt suddenly that he no longer talked to her as to a child. She turned and went back into the town. Gaetano did not follow her; he remained standing in the path where he had kissed her, and it seemed as if never again could he leave that place.
For two days Gaetano dreamed of Donna Micaela, but on the third he came to the summer palace to speak to her.
He found her on the roof-garden, and instantly told her that she must flee with him.
He had thought it out since they parted. He had stood in his workshop and considered everything that had happened, and now it was all clear to him.
She was a rose which the strong sirocco had torn from its stem and roughly whirled through the air, that she might find so much the better rest and protection in a heart which loved her. She must understand that God and all the saints wished and desired that they should love one another, otherwise these great misfortunes would not have brought her near to him. If the Madonna refused to help her, it was because she wished to set her free from her promise of faithfulness to Don Ferrante. For all the saints knew that she was his, Gaetano’s. She was created for him; for him she had grown up; for him she was alive. When he kissed her in the path in the moonlight he had been like a lost child who had wandered long in the desert and now at last had come to the gate of his home. He possessed nothing; but she was his home and his hearth; she was the inheritance God had apportioned to him, the only thing in the world that was his.
Therefore he could not leave her behind. She must go with him; she must, she must!
He did not kneel before her. He stood and talked to her with clenched hands and blazing eyes. He did not ask her, he commanded her to go with him, because she was his.
It was no sin to take her away; it was his duty. What would become of her if he deserted her?
