e rose as she spoke.

"Every minute I stay here makes it more dangerous for me to go back,"
she said. "I know that you will keep your promise. We must say
good-bye."

He had risen, too, and stood facing her, his crutch under his arm. In
all her anxiety for his safety she had half forgotten that his wound was
barely healed, and that he still walked with great difficulty. And now,
at the thought of leaving him she forgot everything else. They had been
so cruelly short, those few minutes of perfect happiness between the
long misunderstanding that had kept them apart and the parting again
that was to separate them, perhaps for months. As they looked at each
other, they both grew pale, and in an instant Zorzi's young face looked
haggard and his eyes seemed to grow hollow, while Marietta's filled with
tears.

"Good-bye!" she cried in a broken voice. "God keep you, my dear love!"

Then her face was buried in the hollow of his shoulder and her tears
flowed fast and burning hot.

CHAPTER XVII

It was over at last, and Zorzi stood alone by the table, for Marietta
would not let him go with her to the door. She could not trust herself
before Pasquale, even in the gloom. He stood by the table, leaning on it
heavily with one hand, and trying to realise all that had come into his
lonely life within the half hour, and all that might happen to him
before morning. The glorious and triumphant certainty which first love
brings to every man when it is first returned, still swelled his heart
and filled the air he breathed, so that while breathing deep, he could
not breathe enough. In such a mood all dangers dwindled, all obstacles
sank out of sight as shadows sink at dawn. And yet the parting had hurt
him, as if his body had been wrenched in the middle by some resistless
force.

Women feel parting differently. Shall we men ever understand them? To a
man, first love is a victory, to a girl it is a sweet wonder, and a joy,
and a tender longing, all in one. And when partings come, as come they
must in life until death brings the last, it is always the man who
leaves, and the woman who is left, even though in plain fact it be the
man that stays behind; and we men feel a little contemptuous pity for
one who seems to cry out after the woman he loves, asking why she has
left him, and beseeching her to come back to him, but our compassion for
the woman in like case is always sincere. In such small things there are
the great mysterie