Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2. F. Marion Crawford

      "There is something," she insisted, speaking thoughtfully. "You cannot deceive a woman, Signor Doctor."

      Dalrymple smiled and looked at her veiled head.

      "You said the other day that I was not a man, but a doctor," he answered. "I suppose I might answer that you are not a woman, but a nun."

      "And is not a nun a woman?" asked Maria Addolorata, and he knew that she was smiling, too.

      "You would not forgive me if I answered you," he said.

      "Who knows? I might be obliged to, since I am obliged to meet you every day. It may be a sin, but I am curious."

      "Shall I tell you?"

      As though instinctively, Maria was silent for a moment, and turned her veiled face towards the abbess's door. But Dalrymple needed no such warning to lower his voice.

      "Tell me," she said, and under her veil she could feel that her eyes were growing deep and the pupils wide and dark, and she knew that she had done wrong.

      "How should I know whether you are a saint or only a woman, since I have never seen your face?" he asked. "I shall never know—for in a few days Doctor Taddei will be well again, and you will not need my services."

      He saw the quick tightening of one hand upon the other, and the slight start of the head, and in a flash he knew that all Annetta had told him was true. The silence that followed seemed longer than the awkward pause which had preceded the conversation.

      "It cannot be so soon," she said in a very low tone.

      "It may be to-morrow," he answered, and to his own astonishment his voice almost broke in his throat, and he felt that his own hands were twisting each other, as though he were in pain. "I shall die without seeing you," he added almost roughly.

      Again there was a short silence in the still room.

      Suddenly, with quick movements of both hands at once, Maria Addolorata threw back the veil from her face, and drew away the folds that covered her mouth.

      "There, see me!" she exclaimed. "Look at me well this once!"

Her face was as white as marble, and her dark eyes had a wild and startled look in them, as though she saw the world for the first time. A ringlet of red-gold hair had escaped from the bands of white that crossed her forehead in an even line and were drawn down straight on either side, for in the quick movement she had made she had loosened the pin that held them together under her chin, and had freed the dazzling throat down to the high collar.