"It was a woman," he said, "who completely altered my views of life, and made me see how perverted and unnatural are our ideas of sex and love and morals, and, in short, of everything. She was an ignorant peasant girl who lived in a neighbouring village, but a woman of rare mind and character. I shall never forget her, nor what I owe her. I was a young fellow of some twenty-one years at the time, and I loved this girl with all the passion and faith of a youth of those years. Teresina loved me in return, and for some two years we lived on happily till one day it was brought to my knowledge that she was unfaithful to me. I was beside myself with grief and mortification and jealous fury. For some hours I just raged up and down my room like one demented, crying like a child one minute, cursing and meditating revenge the next. I felt that I must have blood at all costs to appease my passion--Teresina's or her lover's, or somebody's. I was to meet Teresina that evening as usual towards nine o'clock, and I thought the intervening hours would never go by. One hope suddenly suggested itself to me, and I clung desperately to it. 'Perhaps it is false!' I said to myself. 'I will ask Teresina. It is all a lie,' and then 'Proofs, proofs, I must have proofs!' I cried, and once more my thoughts turned back to murder. Thus I went through the long hours, and at last evening came--a beautiful warm May evening, and long before the appointed hour I was at our rendezvous in a deserted _podere_ on the mountain-side, overgrown with flags and other spring flowers, among which the fireflies were flitting noiselessly. I had no eyes for the beauty of the scene, however. I paced up and down waiting for my sweetheart, cursing the treachery of women and the blindness of men. Suddenly she appeared, dark against the clear evening sky, graceful, gay, and unconscious as ever. Without a word of welcome I rushed at her, seized her by the arm, and hurled forth all my accusations and all my reproaches. "'Tell me it is not true,' I cried at last, 'tell me it is not true, or I will kill you where you stand!' "I expected the usual routine of tears and protestations of innocence, all the lies and subterfuges with which women are wont to defend themselves against the unreasoning savagery of their mates. I was disappointed. Teresina stood perfectly silent till I had finished speaking; then without flinching, without one instant's hesitation, she answered, 'It is true. Every word of it is true.' "If the moon and the stars had all dropped simultaneously out of heaven at my feet I should not have been more astonished. The calmness of her answer, the steady earnestness of her gaze as she looked back fearlessly into my eyes, her utter lack of subterfuge, took away my breath. I dropped her arm and stood staring at her, bereft of speech and understanding. At last I blurted out stupidly that I did not understand her, that I must be going mad, and entreated her to explain.