Slight as was the force he used, she frowned. She paused before
answering.
'I came,' she said in measured accents and looking her lover full in the
eyes--'I came because you asked me. For the sake of the love that was
once between us, for the manner in which that love was broken and for
the long and unexplained silence of my absence I had not the heart to
refuse your invitation. Besides, I wanted to say what I have said: that
I am no longer yours--that I never can be again--never. That is what I
wanted to tell you, honestly and frankly, to save you and myself all
painful disillusionment, all danger or bitterness in the future.--Do you
understand?'
Andrea bowed his head almost to her knee in silence. She stroked his
hair with a familiar gesture of old.
'And then,' she went on in a voice that thrilled him to the heart's
core--'and then--I wanted to tell you--that I love you--love you as much
as ever: that you are still the heart of my heart and that I will be the
fondest of sisters to you, the best of friends--do you understand?'
Andrea made no reply. She took his head between her hands and raised it,
forcing him to look her in the face.
'Do you understand?' she repeated in a still lower, sweeter tone. Her
eyes under the shadow of the long lashes were suffused with a pure and
tender light, her lips were slightly open and trembling.
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