"And so, sweet mother, none knoweth half so well as thou how best to
greet her whom I long to bring to thee, that she may know and love thee
as she doth love her father--with a great love, very beautiful and
tender."

She looked up as if she would have answered him, but she could not
speak.

"More than ever I think I love thee, now that I am grieving thee," he
added after a pause, in a tone so full of comprehension that it smote
her.

"Nay, Marco--nay," she said, and drew him closer, clasping her hand in
his. But they sat quite silent, while the mother's love intensified,
displacing selfishness.

He raised her hand to his lips with a new reverence. "In all this have I
asked so much of thee I think thou never canst forgive me, madre mia,
until--until thou knowest Marina!"

She touched his hair with her beautiful white hand caressingly, as she
had often done when he was a little child; but now, in this sudden
deepening of her nature, with a new yearning.

"Marco, when thou wert a babe," she said, "there was little I would not
give for thine asking. And now, when my soul is bound up in thine, I
seem not to care for the things I once sought for thee--but more for
happiness and love. Yet, if I go with thee--I seem to know thou wilt not
change to me--?" She paused, wistfully.