"Lucia, Lucia," I pleaded, "I would not insult you for the world--I would not think a thought--speak a word--dishonouring to you for my life--" "You have--you have--it is all ended--broken!" she said, standing up--"all broken and thrown down!" She made with her hands the bitter gesture of breaking. "Listen," she said, while I stood amazed and silent. "I am no girl. I am older than you, and know the world. It is because I dreamed I saw that which I thought truer and purer in you than the conventions of life that I asked you to come here--" "Lucia, Lucia, my lady, listen to me," I pleaded, trying to take her hand. She put me aside with the single swift, imperious movement which women use when their pride is deeply wounded. "That lady"--she pointed within to where the silent dame of years was tinkling unconcernedly on the keys--"is my dead husband's mother. Surely she abundantly supplies the proprieties. And now you--you whom I thought I could trust, spoil my year--spoil my life, slay in a moment my love with reproach and scorn!" She walked to the door, turned and said--"You, whom I trusted, have done this!" Then she threw out her hands in an attitude of despair and scorn, and disappeared. I sat long with my head on my hands, thinking--the world about me in ruins, never to be built up. Then I went up to my room, paused at the wardrobe, changed my black coat to that in which I had arrived, and went softly down-stairs again. The waning moon had just risen late, and threw a weird light over the ranges of buildings, the gateways and towers. I walked swiftly to the outer gate, and, there leaping a hedge of flowering plants, I fled down the mountain through the vineyards. I went swiftly, eager to escape from Castel del Monte, but in the tangle of walls and fences it was not easy to advance. At the parting of three ways I paused, uncertain in which direction to proceed. Suddenly, without warning, a dark figure stepped from some hidden place. I saw the gleam of something bright. I knew that I was smitten. Waves of white-hot metal ran suddenly in upon my brain, and I knew no more. When I awoke, my first thought was that I was back again in the room where Lucia and I had talked together. I felt something perfumed and soft like a caress. It seemed like the filmy lace that the Countess wore upon her shoulder. My head lay against it. I heard a voice say, as it had been in my ear, through the murmuring floods of many waters--"My boy! my boy! And I, wicked one that I was, sent you to this!"