It would n't serve; I was beaten and broken; they were stronger than I.Now it 's another affair!""It seems to me you have a large chance for happiness yet,"said Rowland, vaguely.
"Happiness? I mean to cultivate rapture; I mean to go in for bliss ineffable! You remember I told you that I was, in part, the world's and the devil's.Now they have taken me all.
It was their choice; may they never repent!""I shall hear of you," said Rowland.
"You will hear of me.And whatever you do hear, remember this:
I was sincere!"
Prince Casamassima had approached, and Rowland looked at him with a good deal of simple compassion as a part of that "world"against which Christina had launched her mysterious menace.
It was obvious that he was a good fellow, and that he could not, in the nature of things, be a positively bad husband;but his distinguished inoffensiveness only deepened the infelicity of Christina's situation by depriving her defiant attitude of the sanction of relative justice.
So long as she had been free to choose, she had esteemed him:
but from the moment she was forced to marry him she had detested him.
Rowland read in the young man's elastic Italian mask a profound consciousness of all this; and as he found there also a record of other curious things--of pride, of temper, of bigotry, of an immense heritage of more or less aggressive traditions--he reflected that the matrimonial conjunction of his two companions might be sufficiently prolific in incident.
"You are going to Naples?" Rowland said to the prince by way of conversation.
"We are going to Paris," Christina interposed, slowly and softly.
"We are going to London.We are going to Vienna.
We are going to St.Petersburg."
Prince Casamassima dropped his eyes and fretted the earth with the point of his umbrella.While he engaged Rowland's attention Christina turned away.
When Rowland glanced at her again he saw a change pass over her face;she was observing something that was concealed from his own eyes by the angle of the church-wall.In a moment Roderick stepped into sight.
He stopped short, astonished; his face and figure were jaded, his garments dusty.He looked at Christina from head to foot, and then, slowly, his cheek flushed and his eye expanded.
Christina returned his gaze, and for some moments there was a singular silence."You don't look well!"Christina said at last.
Roderick answered nothing; he only looked and looked, as if she had been a statue."You are no less beautiful!"he presently cried.
She turned away with a smile, and stood a while gazing down the valley; Roderick stared at Prince Casamassima.
Christina then put out her hand to Rowland."Farewell," she said.
"If you are near me in future, don't try to see me!"And then, after a pause, in a lower tone, "I was sincere!"She addressed herself again to Roderick and asked him some commonplace about his walk.But he said nothing; he only looked at her.
Rowland at first had expected an outbreak of reproach, but it was evident that the danger was every moment diminishing.
He was forgetting everything but her beauty, and as she stood there and let him feast upon it, Rowland was sure that she knew it.
"I won't say farewell to you," she said; "we shall meet again!"And she moved gravely away.Prince Casamassima took leave courteously of Rowland; upon Roderick he bestowed a bow of exaggerated civility.Roderick appeared not to see it;he was still watching Christina, as she passed over the grass.
His eyes followed her until she reached the door of her inn.
Here she stopped and looked back at him.
