IX
There had been no light in the dining-room except the reflection from
the lamp in the sitting-room, and now it fell with awful shadows on the
whitening face turned upward on the couch. The pains of death had given
a distorted expression, and the eyes remained open. Roma wished to close
them, but dared not try, and the image of inanimate objects standing in
the light was mirrored in their dull and glassy surface. The dog in the
distance was still barking, and a company of tipsy revellers were
passing through the piazza singing a drinking song with a laugh in it.
When they were gone the clocks outside began to strike. It was one
o'clock, and the hour seemed to dance over the city in single steps.
Roma's terror became unbearable. Feeling herself to be a murderer, she
acted on a murderer's impulse and prepared to fly. When she recalled the
emotions with which she had determined to kill the Baron and then
deliver herself up to justice, they seemed so remote that they might
have existed only in a dream or belonged to another existence.
Trembling from head to foot, and scarcely able to support herself, she
fixed her hat and veil afresh, put on her coat, and, taking one last
fearful look at the wide-open eyes on the couch, she went backwards to
the door. She dared not turn round from a creeping fear that something
might touch her on the shoulder.
The door was open. No doubt Rossi had left it so, and she had not
noticed the circumstance until now. She had got as far as the first
landing when a poignant memory came to her--the memory of how she had
first descended those stairs with Rossi, going side by side, and almost
touching. The feeling that she had been fatal to the man since then
nearly choked and blinded her, but it urged her on. If she remained
until some one came, and the crime was discovered, what was she to say
that would not incriminate her husband?
Suddenly she became aware of sounds from below--the measured footsteps
of soldiers. She knew who they were. They were the Carabineers, and they
were coming for Rossi, who had escaped and was being pursued.
Roma turned instantly, and with a noiseless step fled back to the door
of the apartment, opened it with her latch-key, closed it silently, and
bolted it on the inside. This was done before she knew what she was
doing, and when she regained full possession of her faculties she was in
the sitting-room, and the Carabineers were ringing at the electric bell.