'I do not want that,' said Musa, with the sternness he so seldom saw in her. 'You do not understand; he has done this tonight because it was right to do it, because he is generous, as you say; the other day I would have killed him.'
'Because it is me that you love,' murmured Este, as his hand laid down the pistols and stole up about her throat.
She shook him off a little roughly.
'Yes, I love you,' she said, with an infinite meaning in the simple words, 'I love you. You are all I have, and I have saved you, and I would give my life for yours.'
'That is love. Yet you are so cold———'
'Cold? I? I think not; but do not touch me; it was so you touched the woman dead in Mantua. It angers me———'
She was about to say 'it frightens me,' but the strong courage inherent in her shrank from the acknowledgment of any fear. When he would have insisted, she still put him away from her with more sternness than he had ever seen.
'We have escaped with our lives tonight,' she said, with reproach and awe in her voice; 'think not of me; pray to God.'
