Her eyes were blinded with tears, but her voice thickened with anger.
"My child," said the Baron, "if I have asked you to acquiesce in the
idea that what you did was from a certain motive it was only to spare
you pain. I thought it would be easier for you to do so now, things
being as they are. It was only going back to your original purpose,
forgetting all that has intervened."
His voice softened, and he said in a low tone: "If I am so much to
blame for what has been done, perhaps it was because you were first of
all at fault! At the beginning my one offence consisted in agreeing to
your proposal. It was the statesman who committed that error, and the
man has suffered for it ever since. You know nothing of jealousy, my
child--how can you?--but its pains are as the pains of hell."
He tried to approach her once more.
"Come, dear, try to be yourself again. Forget this moment of
fascination, and rise afresh to your old strength and wisdom. I am
willing to forget ... whatever has happened--I don't ask what. I am
ready to wipe it all away, just as if it had never been."
In spite of his soft words and gentle tones, Roma was gazing at him with
an aversion she had never felt before for any human being.
"Have no qualms about your marriage, my child. I assure you it is no
marriage at all. In the eye of the civil law it is frankly invalid, and
the Church could annul it at any moment, being no sacrament, because you
are unbaptized and therefore not in her sense a Christian."
He took another step towards her and said:
"But if you have lost one husband another is waiting for you--a more
devoted and more faithful husband--one who can give you everything in
the place of one who can give you nothing.... And then that man has gone
out of your life for good. Whatever happens now, it is impossible that
you and he can ever come together again. But I am here still.... Don't
answer hastily, Roma. Isn't it something that I am ready to face the
opprobrium that will surely come of marrying the most criticised woman
in Rome?"
Roma felt herself to be suffocating with indignation and shame.
"You see I am suing to you, Roma--I who have never sued to any human
being. Even when I was a child I would not sue to my own mother. Since
then I have done something in life--I have justified myself, I have
given my country a place among the nations, I stand for it in the eye of
the world--and yet--"