"And then this morning, when I got here--I think I ran all the way; I am sure I did, for I saw people staring at me as I passed--to be met by Annunziata with the news that they were _gone_! I did not believe her; I laughed in her face, and then she grew angry, and bid me come in and see for myself! And I rushed past her, in here, with my arms stretched out, confident that in one short moment more _she_ would be filling them, and instead of her"--dropping upon his knees by the table with a groan--"I find this!"--dashing the note upon the floor--"all that she leaves me to fill my embrace instead of her is this poor little pillow, that still seems to keep a faint trace of the perfume of her delicate head!" He buries his own in it again as he speaks, beginning afresh to sob loudly. Jim stands beside him, his mind half full of compassion and half of a burning exasperation, and his body wholly rigid. "When did they go? at what hour? last night or this morning?" "This morning early, quite early." "They have left all their things behind them"--looking round at the room, strewn with the traces of recent and refined occupation. "Yes"--lifting his wet face out of his cushion--"and at first, seeing everything just as usual, even to her very workbasket--she has left her very workbasket behind--I was quite reassured. I felt certain that they could have gone for only a few hours--for the day perhaps; but----" He breaks off "Yes?" "They left word that their things were to be packed and sent after them to an address they would give." "And you do not know where they have gone?" "I know nothing, nothing, only that they are gone. "'Then tell, oh tell! how thou didst murder me?' Oh! oh!! oh!!!" "You never heard them speak of their plans, mention any place they intended to move to on leaving Florence?" "Never!" "It is too late for Rome," says Jim musingly; "England? I hardly think England," recalling Elizabeth's forlorn admission made to him at Monte Senario, "Why should we go home? We have nothing pleasant to go to." "I do not think they had any plans," says Byng, speaking in a voice which is thick with much weeping; "they never seemed to me to have any. She was so happy here, so gay, there never was anything more lovely than her gaiety, except--except--her tenderness." "Yes, yes, no doubt. Then you are absolutely without a clue?" "Absolutely." "Do you mean to say that up to yesterday--all through yesterday, even--she never gave you a hint of any intention of leaving Florence?" "Never, _never_. On the contrary, in the----" (he is going to say "the wood," but thinks better of it), "we were planning many more such expeditions as yesterday's. At least, I was planning them." "And she assented?" "She did not _dis_sent. She met me with a look of divine acquiescence." Jim turns away his head. He is involuntarily picturing to himself what that look was like, and with what sweet dumb-show it was accompanied.