"I am going. I suppose the truth is you are getting tired of having me on your hands!" "Costantino, Costantino!" exclaimed the old man in a hurt voice. Costantino pulled up a tuft of rushes, threw it from him, and gazed again into the distance. His face was working as it had done on the morning of his return, after he had closed the door of Isidoro's hut; his brain swam, once or twice he gulped down the bitter saliva that rose in his throat; then he spoke: "Well, after all, why does the priest insist so on my going? Am I not actually her husband? Suppose even that she were to come back to me? Wouldn't it be coming back to her own husband?" "If she were to come back to you, my dear fellow, it would be Brontu Dejas either killing you or having you arrested." "Well, you needn't be afraid; I don't want her. She's a fallen woman, as far as I am concerned. I shall go off somewhere, to a distance, and marry some one else." "Oh, no! You would never do that," murmured Isidoro appealingly. "You are too good a Christian." "No; I would never do that," repeated Costantino mechanically. "Never in the world; you are far too good a Christian." The old man said it again, but without conviction. The experience of a long life was battling with the tenets of his simple faith. "If he does not do it," he sighed to himself, "it will not be merely because he is a good Christian." FOOTNOTE: [9] Head of cattle. CHAPTER XVII The July evening fell softly, tranquilly, like a bluish veil. Costantino, seated on the stone bench outside the fisherman's hut, was thoughtfully counting on his fingers. Yes; it had been sixty-four days since his return. Six-ty-four days! It seemed like yesterday, and--it seemed like a century! The exile's fustian coat had grown worn and shabby; his face, dark and gloomy; and his heart--yes, his heart as well, had worn away from day to day, from hour to hour. Eaten into by misery, by rage and passion, it, too, had turned black, like a thing on the verge of decay. A habit of dissembling, a result of prison life, had clung to him; so that now he found it impossible to be really open with any one, much as he sometimes longed to unburden his heart; while the constant effort to conceal his feelings harassed him and added to his general misery. A frozen void seemed to surround him, like a great sea, calm, but boundless, stretching away in all directions from a shipwrecked mariner. For two months now he had been swimming in this sea, and he was wearied out; his forces were spent. Scan the horizon as he would, his soul could espy no friendly shore across that bleak and desolate expanse; no prospect of an end to the unequal struggle; the icy water and the measureless void were slowly swallowing him up.