I watched them tighten upon it.
“Go on,” she said.
“I went down into Florence,” I said.
“The servant had given me the address of Signor Rainaldi.
I went and called upon him.
He looked startled at sight of me, but soon recovered.
He gave me the particulars of Ambrose’s illness and death, also a note to the guardian at the Protestant cemetery should I care to visit the grave, which I did not.
I inquired of your whereabouts, but he professed not to know.
That was all.
The following day I started back on my journey home.”
There was another pause.
The fingers relaxed their hold upon the ring.
“Can I see the letters?” she said.
I took them from my pocket and gave them to her.
I looked back again at the fire, and I heard the crinkle of the paper as she opened the letters.
There was a long silence.
Then she said,
“Only these two?”
“Only those two,” I answered.
“Nothing after Easter, or Whitsun, did you say, until these came?”
“No, nothing.”
She must have been reading them over and over, learning the words by heart as I had done.
At last she gave them back to me.
“How you have hated me,” she said slowly.
I looked up, startled, and it seemed to me, as we stared at one another, that she knew now all my fantasies, my dreams, that she saw one by one the faces of the women I had conjured all those months.
Denial was no use, protestation absurd.
The barriers were down.
It was a queer feeling, as though I sat naked in my chair.
“Yes,” I said.
It was easier, once said.
Perhaps, I thought to myself, this is how a Catholic feels in the confessional.
This is what it means to be purged.
A burden lifted.
Emptiness instead.
“Why did you ask me here?” she said.
“To accuse you.”
“Accuse me of what?”
“I am not sure.
Perhaps of breaking his heart, which would be murder, wouldn’t it?”
“And then?”
“I had not planned so far.
I wanted, more than anything in the world, to make you suffer.
To watch you suffer.
Then, I suppose, to let you go.”
“That was generous. More generous than I should deserve.
Still, you have been successful. You have got what you wanted.
Go on watching me, until you’ve had your fill.”
Something was happening to the eyes that looked at me.
The face was very white and still; that did not change.
Had I ground the face to powder with my heel, the eyes would have remained, with the tears that never ran down upon the cheeks, and never fell.