Clementina was silent; her driver was no more talkative. They were alone
and together on the road to Italy. That embarrassment from which Wogan's
confession of fear had procured them some respite held them in a stiff
constraint. They were conscious of it as of a tide engulfing them.
Neither dared to speak, dreading what might come of speech. The most
careless question, the most indifferent comment, might, as it seemed to
both, be the spark to fire a mine. Neither had any confidence to say,
once they had begun to talk, whither the talk would lead; but they were
very much afraid, and they sat very still lest a movement of the one
should provoke a question in the other. She knew his secret, and he was
aware that she knew it. She could not have found it even then in her
heart to part willingly with her knowledge. She had thought over-much
upon it during the last day. She had withdrawn herself into it from the
company of her fellow-travellers, as into a private chamber; it was
familiar and near. Nor would Wogan have desired, now that she had the
knowledge, to deprive her of it, but he knew it instinctively for a
dangerous thing. He drove on in silence while the stars paled in the
heavens and a grey, pure light crept mistily up from the under edges of
the world, and the morning broke hard and empty and cheerless. Wogan
suddenly drew in the reins and stopped the cart.
"There is a high wall behind us. It stretches across the fields from
either side," said he. "It makes a gateway of the road."
Clementina turned. The wall was perhaps ten yards behind them.
"A gateway," said she, "through which we have passed."
"The gateway of Italy," answered Wogan; and he drew the lash once or
twice across the pony's back and so was silent. Clementina looked at his
set and cheerless face, cheerless as that chill morning, and she too was
silent. She looked back along the road which she had traversed through
snow and sunshine and clear nights of stars; she saw it winding out from
the gates of Innspruck over the mountains, above the foaming river, and
after a while she said very wistfully,-"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."
"Are there any better?" answered Wogan.
So this was what Mr. Wogan's fine project had come to. He remembered
another morning when the light had welled over the hills, sunless and
clear and cold, on the road to Bologna,--the morning of the day when he
had first conceived the rescue of Clementina. And the rescue had been
effected, and here was Clementina safe out of Austria, and Wogan sure of
a deathless renown, of the accomplishment of an endeavour held absurd
and preposterous; and these two short sentences were their summary and
comment,-"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."