"I am sorry, Signorina, but there is no possible doubt."
She sat down heavily; against her inner knowledge, she had been hoping against hope. The red and yellow striped awning over the balcony cast a bright glow on the floor, through the parted Venetian blinds; a bowl of late roses stood on the table, filling the air with their musky perfume, and the heavy droning of flies against the ceiling emphasized the noon silence. The girl sat like a graven image, staring straight before her with terrible dry eyes, her nerveless hands hung by her side.
Ferrati drew up a chair, and took one of the limp hands in his own.
"Will you not tell me all about it, my child? Remember a doctor is a sort of lay confessor. Perhaps I can help you?"
Thus had she offered to help the unfortunate girl in S. Mario! She laughed mirthlessly.
"I said that myself to a girl a few days ago, she is coming to-morrow for me to help her--the blind leading the blind!"
Her hardness alarmed the Doctor. "I must break this," he thought. "I must make her cry."
But she had no intention of crying; in a hard, even voice she told him the tale of Prince Mirko, and the fateful drive over the Campagna, and when she had finished, relapsed into silence.
"Poor little girl!" he said, stroking her hand. "Poor little girl!"
"God forbid! I have seen too much of the world and of men. And if you have been foolish, if you have done wrong--which you have not, in my eyes--you are paying for it heavily enough, God knows!"
"I should feel better about it, if I had really loved him--I thought I did, but I know now that I did not--"
"Many women do not love their husbands, the fathers of their children, and it is not counted sinful," he said, smiling.
"Yes, but marriage is different--If I had loved him I should not feel so humiliated.--I was foolish and weak, I let myself go--And now--"
"And now, my dear, you pay the penalty. It is weakness, not vice, that expiates, in this world," said Ferrati grimly. "Yes, you expiate, there is no obviating that. But there is no necessity for bearing more than is unavoidable--we must consider what is to be done. The past is the past, there is no helping that, we must think of the present. Can you go home to your people?"