‘Leave it at once and come with me. I will take you away. Listen. That journey I was talking of--we will take it together, you and I. First we will go to Italy, very, very far South--to Sicily, to some place where no foreigners ever go. Think of it now, at this moment--the life, the sunshine, and the glory of it; then think of this bleak place and this bleak life; this cold air, that chill gray sea, those cold purple moors. We will hide nothing. In a very short time everything will be quite right. He’--he nodded in the direction of the Hall--‘will have applied to the law for redress of the wrong you have done him, which, as you are the sinner and he the saint, with all the good and pious world on his side, will be quickly accorded to him. Then you are free, and then you are my wife, who shall never know a grief or a pain or a harsh word or a humiliation again. That is what I want you to do.’ ‘There is only one thing that prevents me from doing it,’ said Fulvia quietly, more quietly than he liked. ‘Loss of position and consideration, I suppose you mean--all the precious whited sepulchre business in which society deals. It is a mere prejudice, as you know. You are at present on the right side as regards that.... What pleasure has it ever brought you? What good has it done you?’ ‘I don’t mean that at all. I have tried that, and I find that, though it has its value--there is more in it, Hans, than you will own--yet one may pay too high a price for it--when you are an exceptional case’--she spoke bitterly. ‘You see, caro mio, society is arranged to meet the needs of the many who don’t think, and who only want to have things made easy for them. The few, who have not been lucky enough to make themselves fit into it, must suffer the consequences of their stupidity.’ ‘Don’t taunt me with abstract reasoning when I am dying to hear a word of kindness from you,’ he besought her. Indeed, abstract reasoning in any shape was distasteful to Hans. ‘Well, I will be very concrete, very prosaic, and very narrow,’ said she with a faint smile. ‘It is not the fear of losing my distinguished position in society, nor my spotless reputation, which really is a perfectly negative kind of good. I am thinking of what all of them down there would feel.’ She moved her hand towards Minna’s house. ‘What utter nonsense! They know; they are not children, they are not puritans. I believe Minna would rather see you happy than what people are fools enough to call blameless, any day.’ ‘You do not know Minna, then. Her love is very dear to me. Sometimes, in my wretchedness, I think I am past caring for anything of the kind. But when I think of Minna heartbroken, I can’t bear it. And worse than that--Signor Oriole.’ She whispered his name. Hans was not without the coarseness which comes, not of wilful malice, but of utter incompetency to distinguish between what may be said and what may not. ‘The last person in the world who could blame you,’ he said almost sharply.