"Don't. Don't." Face hidden in her fingers, she began to sob weakly. "Yes, yes. It is the only way to save you from yourself." Falling on his knees beside the chair, he removed the hands from her tear-wet face. "Now--tell me all," he commanded. She faltered out the pitiful story of Claire's death and Alexis's remorse. "So you see how he needs me," she ended. "But I--I need you too," he insisted desperately, crushed by the tragedy of it all. "Not the way he does," she interposed. "Oh, Vittorio, I have promised. I cannot break my word even----" her voice faltered--"even for you! Nothing but Alexis' own will can ever separate us now!" He groaned. "But you are not happy. You do not love him. You love me. Even he wouldn't ask you to keep your word if he knew that," he said miserably. "But he doesn't know. He doesn't dream that I don't love him, poor boy. I'd rather tear myself in pieces than have him guess. He has been so unhappy, so miserable!" "But Anne, doesn't my unhappiness, my misery, mean as much to you as his?" She turned an anguished face towards him, laying her hands upon his shoulders. "You know what it means to me," she gasped. "I--I love you, Vittorio." His arms closed about her frantically. "This is horrible. You say you love me and yet you are going to marry another man." "I have given my word," she whispered, against his heart. They were silent for a moment, while the perfumed breeze rustled in the tree-tops and played with the vines upon the wall. "What was that?" exclaimed Anne, starting up nervously. A new sound, like a stealthy footstep had risen from the path beneath them. "Nothing, dearest." Vittorio rose and peered over the parapet, into the black pit that was the garden, "Nothing at all. It must have been a fallen branch." "For a moment I thought it was Alexis," she breathed, hand on bounding heart. He strolled back to her. "Ah, you see, he frightens you already. He is in the back of your mind constantly. Give him up before it is too late, cara. If you don't, I shall have to go to him myself and tell him the truth. If he doesn't release you then, he is a cad." She stood up and faced him. "If you do that, I shall never see you again. It would be the act of a fiend. It would kill every spark of love that I ever felt for you." "Anne, Anne, are you asking me to give you up again?" He stretched famished arms towards her. She wrung her hands against a sudden, smiting anguish, that left her weak and trembling. "Yes----" she whispered. "Vittorio!" She slipped into his outstretched arms with a strangled cry. Their lips met, lingered, then parted unsatisfied. * * * * * Only a few words, a woman's smothered cry, but sufficient to quench forever Alexis' joy. Only a few words in fewer moments, but enough to send tottering the entire foundation of his being, which less than a minute before had towered to the limitless heavens.