"No father that he ever knew at all, Nor never had--no, never had, I say!" --and a mother who only lived two weeks, and Pietro and Violante gone! Only his saint to guard him--that was why she chose the new one; _he_ would not be tired of guarding namesakes. . . . After all, she hopes her boy will come to disbelieve her history, as herself almost does. It is dwindling fast to that: "Sheer dreaming and impossibility-- Just in four days too! All the seventeen years, Not once did a suspicion visit me How very different a lot is mine From any other woman's in the world. The reason must be, 'twas by step and step It got to grow so terrible and strange. These strange woes stole on tip-toe, as it were . . . Sat down where I sat, laid them where I lay, And I was found familiarised with fear." First there was the amazement of finding herself disowned by Pietro and Violante. Then: "So with my husband--just such a surprise, Such a mistake, in that relationship! Everyone says that husbands love their wives, Guard them and guide them, give them happiness; 'Tis duty, law, pleasure, religion: well-- You see how much of this comes true with me!" Next, "there is the friend." . . . People will not ask her about him; they smile and give him nicknames, and call him her lover. "Most surprise of all!" It is always that word: how he loves her, how she loves him . . . yet he is a priest, and she is married. It all seems unreal, like the childish game in which she and her little friend Tisbe would pretend to be the figures on the tapestry:-- "You know the figures never were ourselves. . . . Thus all my life." Her life is like a "fairy thing that fades and fades." "--Even to my babe! I thought when he was born, Something began for me that would not end, Nor change into a laugh at me, but stay For evermore, eternally, quite mine." And hers he is, but he is gone, and it is all so confused that even _he_ "withdraws into a dream as the rest do." She fancies him grown big, "Strong, stern, a tall young man who tutors me, Frowns with the others: 'Poor imprudent child! Why did you venture out of the safe street? Why go so far from help to that lone house? Why open at the whisper and the knock?'" * * * * * That New Year's Day, when she had been allowed to get up for the first time, and they had sat round the fire and talked of him, and what he should do when he was big-- "Oh, what a happy, friendly eve was that!" And next day, old Pietro had been packed off to church, because he was so happy and would talk so much, and Violante thought he would tire her. And then he came back, and was telling them about the Christmas altars at the churches--none was so fine as San Giovanni--