For a moment she sat silent, as in the days when they had been too near
each other for many words; and there was something indescribably
soothing in this dreamlike return to the past. It was he who roused
himself first.
"How young you look!" he said, giving involuntary utterance to his
thought.
"Do I?" she answered gaily. "I am glad of that, for I feel
extraordinarily young tonight. Perhaps it is because I have been
thinking a great deal of the old days--of Venice and Turin--and of the
high-road to Vercelli, for instance." She glanced at him with a smile.
"Do you know," she went on, moving to a seat at his side, and laying a
hand on the arm of his chair, "that there is one secret of mine you have
never guessed in all these years?"
Odo returned her smile. "What is it, I wonder?" he said.
She fixed him with bright bantering eyes. "I knew why you deserted us at
Vercelli." He uttered an exclamation, but she lifted a hand to his lips.
"Ah, how angry I was then--but why be angry now? It all happened so long
ago; and if it had not happened--who knows?--perhaps you would never
have pitied me enough to love me as you did." She laughed softly,
reminiscently, leaning back as if to let the tide of memories ripple
over her. Then she raised her head suddenly, and said in a changed
voice: "Are your plans fixed for tomorrow?"
Odo glanced at her in surprise. Her mind seemed to move as capriciously
as Maria Clementina's.
"The constitution is signed," he answered, "and my ministers proclaim it
tomorrow morning.
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