Some dead leaves fled before him, their tripping sound was no lighter than the fall of her elfin feet. The moon suddenly peeped at him through a clearing; and he saw her moon-white shoulders. The chirrup of a brimming brook struck upon his ear; and he seemed to be carrying her once more in his arms, while she murmured: "Listen, Antonio, all the world is singing." He knew that the guest-house must tear his wound wide open, and that he ought to hurry home to the farm; but an irresistible influence drew him on. He reached the broad path. He stood under the casement whence she had flung the white rose. It was still ajar. He turned the key in the lock and entered the ghostly and silent house. There was enough moonlight in the salon to show him the blue ottoman whereon she had so often sat. He hurried out of the room with a heart ready to burst. At the foot of the stairs he paused. They led to her chamber. Could he bear to cross its threshold, to lean out of the window as she had leaned out after the thunder, and to look at the bed where she had lain sobbing for his sake? He knew he could not bear it. But his intellect had ceased to govern him and he ascended the stairs. A broad moonbeam lit up every corner of her chamber. Like a man dazed he lurched to the window. There were the roses and there were the thorns. He turned to gaze at her couch. The fine linen had been taken away; but there was the place where she had lain, there was the pillow which her golden head had pressed. What had her last night been? Had she hated him or did she love him still? Had she cursed God or had she prayed? For a moment his mind turned the question over in a numb, impersonal way. Then he came back with a rush to himself and, in a single moment, his chalice of agony welled up and brimmed over. He flung himself down on his knees and stretched out desperate hands and hungry arms across the narrow bed. Although long minutes passed his dry-eyed, stony anguish remained. But at last his inward, spiritual man spoke. Was he committing a grievous sin? Was he breaking, in spirit, a vow which he was only keeping in the letter? Had he forsaken the Creator for a creature? Slowly, but very surely, his conscience framed the answer. No, he had not sinned. In all his desire of her there was still nothing of the carnal mind. He was racked and scorched by anguish, not because he had lost her love, but because he had been forced to break her heart by refusing her his own. She was a child, a poor lonely child with neither man nor woman to love her, nor any God to console her; and he, Antonio, had flung her back into a still blacker frost and sharper famine, to pine and wither without love and without faith. Yet, in all this, he had simply obeyed God. He had obeyed the God who commanded Abram to offer up Isaac, the God who "spared not His own Son, but freely gave Him up for us all."