e there is
our friendship. That is of gold."

Francesca listened in silence, thoughtful and with downcast eyes, as the
short, disjointed sentences broke vehemently from his lips, each one
accusing her in her own heart of having wrought the misery of two lives,
one of which was very dear to her. Too dear, as she knew at last. The
scarlet shame would have burned her face, if she had owned to herself
that she loved this man, whom she had married to another, believing that
she was making his happiness. She would not own it. Had she admitted it
then, she would have been capable of leaving him within the hour, and of
shutting herself up forever in the Convent at Subiaco to expiate the sin
of the thought. It was monstrous in her eyes, and she would still refuse
to see it.

But she owned that there was the suspicion, and that Angelo Reanda was
far dearer to her than anything else on earth. Her innocence was so
strong and spotless that it had a right to its one and only
satisfaction. But what she felt for Reanda was either love, or it was
blasphemy against the holy thing in whose place he stood in her temple.
It must not be love, and therefore, as anything else, it was too much.
And the strange joy she felt because Gloria was nothing to him, still
filled her heart, though it began to torment her with the knowledge of
evil which she had never understood.

There was much else against him, too, in her pride of race, and it
helped her just then, for it told her how impossible it was that she, a
princess of the house of Braccio, should love a mere artist, the son of
a steward, whose forefathers had been bondsmen to her ancestors from
time immemorial. It was out of the question, and she would not believe
it of herself. Yet, as she looked into his delicate, spiritual face and
watched the shades of expression that crossed it, she felt that it made
little difference whence he came, since she understood him and he
understood her.

She became confused by her own thoughts and grasped at the idea of a
true and perfect friendship, with a somewhat desperate determination to
see it and nothing else in it, for the rest of her life, rather than
part with Angelo Reanda.

"Friends," she said thoughtfully. "Yes--always friends, you and I. But
as a friend, Reanda, what can I do? I cannot help you."

"The time for help is past, if it ever came. You are a saint--pray for
me. You can do that."

"But there is more than that to be done," she said