Rossi, blinded with his tears, took a step into the loggia, and in a low
voice, very soft and tremulous, as if trying not to startle her, he
cried: "Roma!"
She raised herself, turned, saw him, and rose to her feet. Without a
word he opened his arms to her, and with a little frightened cry she
fell into them and was folded to his breast.
IX
It was ten days later. Rossi had surrendered to Parliament, but
Parliament had declined to order his arrest. Then he had called for the
liberation of Roma, but Roma had neither been liberated nor removed. "It
will not be necessary," was the report of the doctor at the Castle to
the officers of the Prefetura. The great liberator and remover was on
his way.
At Rossi's request Dr. Fedi had been called in, and he had diagnosed the
case exactly. Roma was suffering from an internal disease, which was
probably hereditary, but certainly incurable. Strain and anxiety had
developed it earlier in life than usual, but in any case it must have
come.
At first Rossi rebelled with all his soul and strength. To go through
this long and fierce fight with life, and to come out victorious, and
then, when all seemed to promise peace and a kind of tempered happiness,
to be met by Death--the unconquerable, the inevitable--it was terrible,
it was awful!
He called in specialists; talked of a change of air; even brought
himself, when he was far enough away from Roma, to the length of
suggesting an operation. The doctors shook their heads. At last he bowed
his own head. His bride-wife must leave him. He must live on without
her.
Meantime Roma was cheerful, and at moments even gay. Her gaiety was
heart-breaking. Blinding bouts of headache were her besetting trouble,
but only by the moist red eyes did any one know anything about that.
When people asked her how she felt, she told them whatever she thought
they wished to hear. It brought a look of relief to their faces, and
that made her very happy.
With Rossi, during these ten days, she had carried on the fiction that
she was getting better. This was to break the news to him, and he on his
part, to break the news to her, had pretended to believe the story. They
made Elena help the little artifice, and even engaged the doctors in
their mutual deception.
"And how is my darling to-day?"
"Splendid! There's really nothing to do with me. It's true I have
suffered. That's why I look so pale. But I'm better now. Elena will tell
you how well I slept last night. Didn't I sleep well, Elena? Elena....
Poor Elena is going a little deaf and doesn't always speak when she is
spoken to. But I'm all right, David. In fact, I'll feel no pain at all
before long, and then I shall be well."