Then he pressed his lips to the tip of her boot.

"What are you doing?"

"I kiss your feet because they have come."

He rose, drew her to him softly, and placed a long kiss on her lips.
She remained inert, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. Her toque
fell, her hair dropped on her shoulders.

Two hours later, when the setting sun made immeasurably longer the
shadows on the stones, Therese, who had wished to walk alone in the city,
found herself in front of the two obelisks of Santa Maria Novella without
knowing how she had reached there. She saw at the corner of the square
the old cobbler drawing his string with his eternal gesture. He smiled,
bearing his sparrow on his shoulder.

She went into the shop, and sat on a chair. She said in French:

"Quentin Matsys, my friend, what have I done, and what will become of
me?"

He looked at her quietly, with laughing kindness, not understanding nor
caring. Nothing astonished him. She shook her head.

"What I did, my good Quentin, I did because he was suffering, and because
I loved him. I regret nothing."

He replied, as was his habit, with the sonorous syllable of Italy: