“You know, dear that if I submitted to wed your cousin, it was to save you--that such was the price imposed?” “Dear saint!” I cried. “I but mention it that upon such a score you may have no doubt of my motives.” “How could I doubt?” I protested. I rose, and moved down the room towards the window, behind which the night gleamed deepest blue. I looked out upon the gardens from which the black shadows of stark poplars thrust upward against the sky, and I thought out this thing. Then I turned to her, having as I imagined found the only and rather obvious solution. “There is but one thing to do, Bianca.” “And that?” her eyes were very anxious, and looked perhaps even more so in consequence of the pallor of her face and the lines of pain that had come into it in these weeks of such sore trial. “I must remove the barrier that stands between us. I must seek out Cosimo and kill him.” I said it without anger, without heat of any sort: a calm, cold statement of a step that it was necessary to take. It was a just measure, the only measure that could mend an unjust situation. And so, I think, she too viewed it. For she did not start, or cry out in horror, or manifest the slightest surprise at my proposal. But she shook her head, and smiled very wistfully. “What a folly would not that be!” she said. “How would it amend what is? You would be taken, and justice would be done upon you summarily. Would that make it any easier or any better for me? I should be alone in the world and entirely undefended.” “Ah, but you go too fast,” I cried. “By justice I could not suffer, I need but to state the case, the motive of my quarrel, the iniquitous wrong that was attempted against you, the odious traffic of this marriage, and all men would applaud my act. None would dare do me a hurt.” “You are too generous in your faith in man,” she said. “Who would believe your claims?” “The courts,” I said. “The courts of a State in which Pier Luigi governs?” “But I have witnesses of the facts.” “Those witnesses would never be allowed to testify. Your protests would be smothered. And how would your case really look?” she cried. “The world would conceive that the lover of Bianca de' Cavalcanti had killed her husband that he might take her for his own. What could you hope for, against such a charge as that? Men might even remember that other affair of Fifanti's and even the populace, which may be said to have saved you erstwhile, might veer round and change from the opinion which it has ever held. They would say that one who has done such a thing once may do it twice; that...” “O, for pity's sake, stop! Have mercy!” I cried, flinging out my arms towards her. And mercifully she ceased, perceiving that she had said enough.