then and sought to wrest my heart from me with threats, I would have met your threats with defiance as I do to-day. All is over now between us, and I know that the pity I felt for you was not love. For the last time, where is my room?"
He had said all this in harsh and cutting tones, and as he stopped speaking the sound of his own voice seemed to give him a pang. But he said no more, though wondering silently that she took it much more quietly than he had expected. He would gladly now, with friendly words, have appeased any stormy outbreak of her grief. But she passed coldly by him, opened a heavy wooden door not far from the hearth, pointed silently to the iron bolt on it, and then stepped back again to the fireside.
So he went into the room and bolted the door behind him. But he stayed for some time close by the door, listening to what she was doing. No movement was heard in the room, and in the whole house there was no sound save from the restless dog, the horse stirring in the stable, and the moaning of the wind outside as it scattered the last remains of the fog. For the moon in all its splendour had risen, and when he pulled away a large bundle of heather out of the hole in the wall that served as a window, the room was lit up by its rays. He saw then that he was evidently in Fenice's room. Against the wall stood her clean, narrow bed, an open chest beside it, a small table, a wooden bench; the walls were hung with pictures, saints and Madonnas; a holy water bowl was seen beneath the crucifix by the door.
He sat himself down on the hard bed. and felt that a storm was raging within him. Once or twice he half rose up to hasten to her and tell her that he had only thus wounded her in order to comfort her afterwards. Then he stamped on the floor, vexed at his own soft-heartedness. "It is the only thing left for me to do," he said to himself, "unless I would add to my guilt. Seven years, poor child!" . Mechanically he took in his hand a comb ornamented with little pieces of metal that was lying on the table. This recalled to him her splendid hair, the proud neck on which it lay, the noble brow round which the curls clustered, and the dusky cheek. At last he tossed the tempting object into the chest, in which he saw dresses, kerchiefs, and all sorts of little ornaments neatly and tidily put away. Slowly he let fall the lid and turned to look out at the hole in the wall.
The room was at the back of the house, and none of the other huts in Treppi interfered with the view across the mountains. Opposite was the bare ridge of rock rising up from behind the ravine, and all lit up by the moon, then just over the house. On one side were some sheds, past which ran the road leading down to the plain. One forlorn little fir-tree, with bare branches, was growing among the stones; otherwise the ground was covered with heather only, and here and there a miserable bush. "Certainly," thought he, "this is not the place to forget what one has loved. I would it were otherwise. In truth, she would have been the right wife for me; she would have loved me more than dress and gaiety, and the whisperings of gallants. What eyes my old Marco would make if I suddenly came back from my travels with a lovely wife! We should not need to change the house; the empty corners were always so uncanny. And it would do me good, old grumbler that I am, if a laughing childbut this is folly, Filippo, folly! What would the poor thing do left a widow in Bologna? No, no! no more of this! Let me not add a fresh sin to the old ones. I will wake the men an hour earlier, and steal away before anyone is up in Treppi."
He was just going to move away from the window and stretch his limbs, wearied from the long ride, on the bed, when he saw a woman's figure step out from the
