Diotti divined that something beyond sympathy for old Sanders' sudden death racked her soul. He went toward her and lovingly taking her hands, bent low and pressed his lips to them; they were cold as marble.
"Darling," he said; "something has made you unhappy. What is it?"
"Tell me, Angelo, and truly; is your violin like other violins?"
This unexpected question came so suddenly he could not control his agitation.
"No, Mildred; my violin is different from any other I have ever seen," this hesitatingly and with great effort at composure.
"In what way is it different?" she almost demanded.
"It is peculiarly constructed; it has an extra string. But why this sudden interest in the violin? Let us talk of you, of me, of both, of our future," said he with enforced cheerfulness.
"No, we will talk of the violin. Of what use is the extra string?"
"No, no, Mildred; you do not understand," he cried; "I can not do that."
"You can not do it when I ask it?" she exclaimed.
"Oh Mildred, do not ask me; I can not, can not do it," and the face of the affrighted musician told plainer than words of the turmoil raging in his soul.
"You made me believe that I was the only one you loved," passionately she cried; "the only one; that your happiness was incomplete without me. You led me into the region of light only to make the darkness greater when I descended to earth again. I ask you to do a simple thing and you refuse; you refuse because another has commanded you."
"Mildred, Mildred; if you love me do not speak thus!"
And she, with imagination greater than reasoning power, at once saw a Tuscan beauty and Diotti mutually pledging their love with their lives.
"Go," she said, pointing to the door, "go to the one who owns you, body and soul; then say that a foolish woman threw her heart at your feet and that you scorned it!" She sank to the sofa.
He went toward the door, and in a voice that sounded like the echo of despair, protested: "Mildred, I love you; love you a thousand times more than I do my life. If I should destroy the string, as you ask, love and hope would leave me forevermore. Death would not be robbed of its terror!" and with bowed head he went forth into the twilight.
She ran to the window and watched his retreating figure as he vanished. "Uncle Sanders was right; he loves another woman, and that string binds them together. He belongs to her!" Long and silently she stood by the window, gazing at the shadowing curtain of the coming night. At last her face softened. "Perhaps he does not love her now, but fears her vengeance. No, no; he is not a coward! I should have approached him differently; he is proud, and maybe he resented my imperative manner," and a thousand reasons why he should or should not have removed that string flashed through her mind.