Clementina

Clementina was silent; her driver was no more talkative. They were alone

and together on the road to Italy. That embarrassment from which Wogan's

confession of fear had procured them some respite held them in a stiff

constraint. They were conscious of it as of a tide engulfing them.

Neither dared to speak, dreading what might come of speech. The most

careless question, the most indifferent comment, might, as it seemed to

both, be the spark to fire a mine. Neither had any confidence to say,

once they had begun to talk, whither the talk would lead; but they were

very much afraid, and they sat very still lest a movement of the one

should provoke a question in the other. She knew his secret, and he was

aware that she knew it. She could not have found it even then in her

heart to part willingly with her knowledge. She had thought over-much

upon it during the last day. She had withdrawn herself into it from the

company of her fellow-travellers, as into a private chamber; it was

familiar and near. Nor would Wogan have desired, now that she had the

knowledge, to deprive her of it, but he knew it instinctively for a

dangerous thing. He drove on in silence while the stars paled in the

heavens and a grey, pure light crept mistily up from the under edges of

the world, and the morning broke hard and empty and cheerless. Wogan

suddenly drew in the reins and stopped the cart.

"There is a high wall behind us. It stretches across the fields from

either side," said he. "It makes a gateway of the road."

Clementina turned. The wall was perhaps ten yards behind them.

"A gateway," said she, "through which we have passed."

"The gateway of Italy," answered Wogan; and he drew the lash once or

twice across the pony's back and so was silent. Clementina looked at his

set and cheerless face, cheerless as that chill morning, and she too was

silent. She looked back along the road which she had traversed through

snow and sunshine and clear nights of stars; she saw it winding out from

the gates of Innspruck over the mountains, above the foaming river, and

after a while she said very wistfully,-"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."

"Are there any better?" answered Wogan.

So this was what Mr. Wogan's fine project had come to. He remembered

another morning when the light had welled over the hills, sunless and

clear and cold, on the road to Bologna,--the morning of the day when he

had first conceived the rescue of Clementina. And the rescue had been

effected, and here was Clementina safe out of Austria, and Wogan sure of

a deathless renown, of the accomplishment of an endeavour held absurd

and preposterous; and these two short sentences were their summary and

comment,-"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."