A flush of shame came over the face of the woman; the man drew his hat farther over his eyes, and went out of the kitchen silently. The victory had been easier than their monitor had expected. 'And yet of what use was it?' he thought. They were silent out of respect for him. As soon as the restraint of his presence should be removed they would begin afresh. Unless he could change their souls it was of little avail to bridle their lips for an hour. There was a wild, chafing hatred on one side, and a tyrannical, covetous, dissatisfied love on the other. Out of such discordant elements what peace could come? Gesualdo shut the wooden shutters of the windows that others should not see, as he had seen, into the interior; then he strove to pacify his old playmate, whose heaving breast and burning cheeks, and eyes which scorched up in fire their own tears, spoke of a tempest lulled, not spent. He spoke with all the wisdom with which study and the counsels of the Fathers had supplied him, and with what was sweeter, and more likely to be efficacious, a true and yearning wish to save her from herself. She was altogether wrong, and he strove to make her see the danger and the error of her ways. But he strove in vain. She had one of those temperaments--reckless, vehement, pleasure-loving, ardent, and profoundly selfish--which see only their own immediate gain, their own immediate desires. When he tried to stir her conscience by speaking of the danger she drew down on the head of the man she professed to love, she almost laughed. 'He would be a poor creature,' she said proudly, 'if all danger would not be dear to him for me!' Don Gesualdo looked her full in the eyes. 'You know that this matter must end in the death of one man or of the other. Do you mean that this troubles you not one whit?' 'It will not be my fault,' said Generosa, and he saw in her the woman's lust of vanity which finds food for its pride in the blood shed for her, as the tigress does, and even the gentle hind.