"Nothing from you can be due to me; and hereafter when we chance to
meet, if you would do me a kindness, I beg you not to look my way.
It would make me feel you were thinking of what I have done. And now
good-night; and let this be the last word said."

She laid the handkerchief in the basket, and also the cross, and
closed the lid. But when he looked into her face, he started. Great
heavy drops were rolling down her cheeks; she let them flow
unheeded.

"Maria Santissima!" he cried. "Are you ill? You are trembling from
head to foot!"

"It is nothing," she said; "I must go home;" and with unsteady steps
she was moving to the door, when suddenly she leaned her brow
against the wall, and gave way to a fit of bitter sobbing. Before he
could go to her she turned upon him suddenly, and fell upon his
neck.

"I cannot bear it!" she cried, clinging to him as a dying thing to
life--"I cannot bear it! I cannot let you speak so kindly, and bid
me go, with all this on my conscience. Beat me! trample on me! curse
me! Or if it can be that you love me still, after all I have done to
you, take me and keep me, and do with me as you please; only do not
send me away so!" She could say no more for sobbing.

Speechless, he held her a while in his arms. "If I can love you
still!" he cried at last. "Holy Mother of God! Do you think that all
my best heart's blood has gone from me through that little wound?