'Your promise--remember it!' 'I break it! I will not listen meekly to such folly! Before you took the vow, you had given me your word, as I gave you mine, that we would be man and wife, and since I am not dead, no promise or oath made after that is binding! I know that you love me still, as you did then, and if you will not try to free yourself, then by all you believe, and by all I honour, I will set you free!' It was a challenge if it was not a threat, and Sister Giovanna defended herself as she could.

But she was painfully conscious that something in her responded with a thrill to the cry of the pursuer.
Nevertheless, she answered with a firm refusal.
'You cannot make me do what I will not,' she said.
'I can and I will!' he retorted vehemently.

'It is monstrous that you should be bound by a promise made in ignorance, under a wretched mistake, on a false report that I was dead!' 'We were not even formally betrothed----' 'We loved each other,' interrupted Giovanni, 'and we had told each other so.

That is enough.

We belong to each other just as truly as if we were man and wife----' 'Even if we were,' said the nun, interrupting him in her turn, 'if I had taken my vows in the belief that my husband had been dead for years, I would not ask to be released!' He stared at her, his temper suddenly chilled in amazement.
'But if it were a mistake,' he objected, 'if the Pope offered you a dispensation, would you refuse it ?' Sister Giovanna was prepared, for she had thought of that.
'If you had given a man your word of honour to pay a debt you owed him, would you break your promise if you suddenly found that you could use the money in another way, which would give you the keenest pleasure ?' 'That is quite different! How can you ask such an absurd question ?' 'It is not absurd, and the case is not so different as you think.