They passed out of the table d'hote room into the hall. Then he stretched forth his hand. "You are not coming to see me to-morrow, Nino?" she asked in a low, despondent voice. "No," he replied. "I have an appointment." "But you can surely dine here?" "I am not quite certain," he answered. "If I can, I will send you a telegram." "You are impatient--you who promised me to wait until I could give you some satisfactory explanation. It is cruel of you--very cruel, Nino," she said in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "You are never straightforward," he replied quickly. "If you confessed to me, all this anxiety would at once cease." "I cannot." "No," he said meaningly; "you will not. You dare not, because your past has not been what it should have been! Buona sera!" and with this parting allegation he lifted his hat and bowed stiffly. "Felicissima notte, Nino," she answered so low as to be almost inaudible. Then he turned and passed out of the great glass doors which the porters held open for him. Gemma went to her room, and, bursting into tears, sat for a long time alone, despairing, plunged in grief. She knew by her lover's manner that he had forsaken her, and she felt herself alone in gigantic London, where the language, the people, the streets, all were strange to her. As she sat in her low easy chair, a slim, graceful figure in her pale-blue dinner-dress, she clenched her tiny hands till the nails embedded themselves in the palms, as she uttered with wild abandon the name of the man she so fondly loved. "Ah!" she cried aloud. "You, Nino, who have treated me with this suspicion and contempt--you who have brought me here among your people and deserted me--can never know how much I have sacrificed for your sake. Nor can you ever know how fondly I love you. Why have I acted with all this secrecy must for ever remain a mystery. You have left me," she added in a hoarse, strained voice, half inaudible on account of her sobs--"you have left me now; but some day when I am free--when I can show you things in their true light--you will regret that to-night you have broken a woman's heart." And she bent forward and gave way to a flood of hot, passionate tears. Fully half an hour she sat plunged in a deep melancholy, but at last she rose and crossed the room unsteadily. Her fair brow bore a look of determination, her face was hard set, and in her tear-stained eyes was an expression of strength of will. "Yes," she murmured, "I'll risk all. My life cannot be rendered more hopeless, more wretched, than it now is in this atmosphere of doubt and suspicion." Then she bathed her face in eau-de-Cologne, sniffed her smelling-salts, rubbed her cheeks with a towel to take away their ghastly pallor, and assuming her travelling coat, with its wide fur collar and cuffs, which, being long, hid her dress, she put on her hat and went out. She went up to one of the porters in the hall hastily, and said-- "Prendetimi una vettura."