"Ah! I understand. I know it is impossible to overtake a lie. Once
started it goes on and on, like a stone rolling down-hill, and even the
man who started can never stop it. Tell me what better I can do--tell
me, tell me."
Her face was still down, but it had now a new expression of joy.
"There is one thing you can do, but it is difficult."
"No matter! Tell me what it is."
"I thought when I came here ... but it is no matter."
"Tell me, I beg of you."
He was trying to look into her face again, and she was eluding his gaze
as before, but now for another, a sweeter reason.
"I thought if--if you would come to my house when my friends are there,
your presence as my guest, in the midst of those in whose eyes you have
injured me, might be sufficient of itself to wipe out everything.
But...."
"Is that all?" he said.
"Then you are not afraid?"
"Afraid?"
For one moment they looked at each other, and their eyes were shining.
"I have thought of something else," she said.
"What is it?"
"You have heard that I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the
Municipality, and if I might carve your face into it...."
"It would be coals of fire on my head."
"You would need to sit to me."
"When shall it be?"
"To-morrow morning to begin with, if that is not too soon."
"It will be years on years till then," he said.
She bent her head and blushed. He tried again to look at her beaming
eyes and golden complexion, and for sheer joy of being followed up she
turned her face away.
"Forgive me if I have stayed too long," she said, making a feint of
opening the door.
"I should have grudged every moment if you had gone sooner," he
answered.
"I only wished that you should not think of me with hatred and
bitterness."
"If I ever had such a feeling it is gone."
"Mine has gone too," she said softly, and again she prepared to go.
One hook of her cape had got entangled in the silk muslin at her
shoulder, and while trying to free it she looked at him, and her look
seemed to say, "Will you?" and his look replied, "May I?" and at the
physical touch a certain impalpable bridge seemed in an instant to cross
the space that had divided them.