'It is dearer to me than if it were a palace. I would never live elsewhere. You have been good to me, that I see; but let me go now, and do not follow me.'
He looked at her with infinite longing; but he drew out of her path and left her to go onward unmolested and unquestioned. In the amorous impetuosity of his nature, a finer and a rarer feeling had come since her misfortunes had made her sacred to him. He had done her some service, so his lips were sealed, as were hers to Este. He could not say to her, 'this you owe to me,' without becoming a base hound in his own sight.
'After all I have done so little,' he thought. 'But more she would not take.'
She would never know that he had done anything; in all likelihood she would never have enough sympathy for, or remembrance of, him to guess the share that he had had in her release. But he thought it was best so. If she had known she might have been humbled, angered, troubled. She might have even been afraid to go back to that solitude which was all she knew of safety, all she cared for as home.
And other thoughts thronged on him.
