aid. "Afterwards I will
take you down, and you shall not fall. You shall reach the bottom safely
and go home alone, or I will show you the way, as you please."

"Let go of my wrist!" Aurora spoke angrily, for the strong grasp hurt
her and humiliated her.

"Listen to me," continued Regina, loosing her hold at once. "I am
Regina. You are Aurora. We have heard of each other, and we have met.
Let us talk. This is a good place and we are alone, and the day is
long, and we may not meet again soon. We will say what we have to say
now, and then we will part."

"What is there to be said?" Aurora asked coldly and drawing back a
little.

"We two love the same man," Regina said. "Is that nothing? You know it
is true. If we were not Christians we should try to kill each other
here, where it is quiet. I could easily have killed you just now, and I
wished to."

"I wonder why you did not!" exclaimed Aurora, rather scornfully.

"I thought with myself thus: 'If I kill her, I shall always have the
satisfaction of it as long as I live. This is the truth. But I shall go
to prison for many years and shall not see him again, therefore I will
not do it. Besides, it will not please him. If it would make him happy I
would kill her, even if I were to go to the galleys for it. But it would
not. He would be very angry.' This is what I thought; and I pulled you
up. And now, I will not let you hurt yourself in getting down, because
he would be angry with me if he knew that it was my fault."

Aurora listened to this extraordinary argument in silent surprise. She
was not in the least frightened, but she saw at a glance that Regina was
quite in earnest, and she knew her own people, and that the Roman
peasants are not the gentlest of the Italians.

"He would be very angry," Regina repeated. "I am sure he would!"

"Why should he be angry?" Aurora asked, in a tone half contemptuous and
yet half sad.

"I know he would, because when he raved in his fever he used to call for
you."

Aurora started and fixed her eyes on Regina's.

"Yes," Regina said, answering the look. "He often called you by name. He
loved you once."

She pronounced the words with an accent of pity, drawing herself up to
her full height; and there was triumph in the light of her eyes. It is
not every woman that has a chance of saying so much to her rival.

"We were children then," Aurora said, in the very words she had used to
her mother more than two years earlier.

She w