I will not say
that I have my own work to do; for the dearest service I could perform
would be to help you in yours. But to do this I must stand aside. To be
near you I must go from you. To love you I must give you up."
She looked him full in the eyes as she spoke; then she went up to him
and kissed him. It was the first kiss she had given him since she had
thrown herself in his arms in her father's garden; but now he felt her
whole being on her lips.
He would have held her fast, forgetting everything in the sweetness of
her surrender; but she drew back quickly and, before he could guess her
intention, throw open the door of the room to which de Crucis had
withdrawn.
"Signor abate!" she said.
The Jesuit came forward. Odo was dimly aware that, for an instant, the
two measured each other; then Fulvia said quietly:
"His excellency goes with you to Pianura."
What more she said, or what de Crucis answered, he could never afterward
recall. He had a confused sense of having cried out a last unavailing
protest, faintly, inarticulately, like a man struggling to make himself
heard in a dream; then the room grew dark about him, and in its stead he
saw the old chapel at Donnaz, with its dimly-gleaming shrine, and heard
the voice of the chaplain, harsh and yet strangely shaken:--"My chief
prayer for you is that, should you be raised to this eminence, it may be
at a moment when such advancement seems to thrust you in the dust."
Odo lifted his head and saw de Crucis standing alone before him.
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