Silence again.
The tearful voice once more:
"Noemi!"
No answer.
"Noemi, listen!"
Still no answer. Jeanne began to cry, and Noemi yielded.
"For heaven's sake! what is it now?"
"Piero cannot know that my husband is dead."
"Well, and what of that?"
"Then he cannot know that I am free."
"Well? How stupid you are! You make me angry!"
Silence. Jeanne knew the nature of her anger very well. Her friend's convictions were too much like her own, and she longed to have her painful presentiment contradicted, longed for a word of hope.
She laughed a low, forced laugh:
"Noemi, now you are pretending to be offended on purpose not to have to talk."
Silence.
Jeanne began again, very sweetly:
"Listen. Don't you believe he suffers temptations?"
Silence.
Jeanne, this time ignoring the fact that Noemi did not answer, exclaimed:
"It would be nice if he had just now stopped suffering from temptations'."
Her sarcasm is so comic, that—although she
