He moved towards her, his hands still in the pockets of his heavy tweed overcoat. "Well," he repeated, "and what excuse have you for so deceiving me?" "None," she answered in her soft Tuscan, her eyes still downcast. "I loved you, Nino, and I feared--" She hesitated, without finishing the sentence. "You feared to tell me the truth, even though you well knew that I was foolishly infatuated; that I was a love-blind idiot? No; I don't believe you," he cried fiercely. "You had some further, some deeper motive." She was silent. Her nervous fingers hitched themselves in the lace of her gown, and she grew pallid and haggard. "I now know who you are; how grossly you have deceived me, and how ingeniously I have been tricked," he cried bitterly, speaking Italian with difficulty. "You whom I believed honest and loving, I have found to be only an adventuress, a woman whose notoriety has spread from Como to Messina." "Yes," she cried hoarsely, "yes, Nino, I am an adventuress. Now that my enemies have exposed me, concealment is no longer possible. I deceived you, but with an honest purpose in view. My name, I well know, is synonymous with all that is vicious. I am known as The Funaro--the extravagant woman whose lovers are legion, and of whom stories of reckless waste and ingenious fraud are told by the _jeunesse doree_ in every city in Italy. Ask of any of the smart young men who drink at the Gambrinus at Milan, at Genoa, at Rome, or at Florence, and they will relate stories by the hour of my wild, adventurous life, of my loves and my hatreds, of my gaiety and my sorrow. Yes, I, alas I know it all. I have the reputation of being the gayest woman in all gay Italy; and yet--and yet," she added in a soft voice, "I love you, Nino." "No!" he cried, drawing from her with repugnance, as if in fear that her hands should touch him; "it is not possible that we can exchange words of affection after this vile deceit. All is now plain why the police of Livorno ordered you to leave the city; why Hutchinson, the Consul, urged me to part from you; why, when we drove together in those sun-baked streets, every one turned to look at you. They knew you!" he cried. "They knew you--and they pitied me!" She shrank at these cruel, bitter words as if he had dealt her a blow. From head to foot she trembled as, with an effort, she took a few uneven steps towards him. "You denounce me!" she cried in a low tone. "You, the man I love, declare that I am base, vile, and heartless. Well, if you wish, I will admit all the charges you thus level against me. Only one will I refute. You say that I am an adventuress; you imply that I have never loved you."