“Easily said--but, ah, priest, if you were a man! What if their poison works in me and I go to battle thinking that every Austrian bullet may be sent by her lover’s hand? What if I die not only to free Italy but to free my wife as well?” I laid my hand on his shoulder. “My son, I answer for her. Leave your faith in her in my hands and I will keep it whole.” He stared at me strangely. “And what if your own fail you?” “In her? Never. I call every saint to witness!” “And yet--and yet--ah, this is a blind,” he shouted; “you know all and perjure yourself to spare me!” At that, my son, I felt a knife in my breast. I looked at him in anguish and his gaze was a wall of metal. Mine seemed to slip away from it, like a clawless thing struggling up the sheer side of a precipice. “You know all,” he repeated, “and you dare not let me hear her!” “I dare not betray my trust.” He waved the answer aside. “Is this a time to quibble over church discipline? If you believed in her you would save her at any cost!” I said to myself, “Eternity can hold nothing worse than this for me--“ and clutched my resolve again like a cross to my bosom. Just then there was a hand on the door and we heard Donna Marianna. “Faustina has sent to know if the _signar parocco_ is here.” “He is here. Bid her come down to the chapel.” Roberto spoke quietly, and closed the door on her so that she should not see his face. We heard her patter away across the brick floor of the _salone_. Roberto turned to me. “Egidio!” he said; and all at once I was no more than a straw on the torrent of his will. The chapel adjoined the room in which we sat. He opened the door, and in the twilight I saw the light glimmering before the Virgin’s shrine and the old carved confessional standing like a cowled watcher in its corner. But I saw it all in a dream; for nothing in heaven or earth was real to me but the iron grip on my shoulder. “Quick!” he said and drove me forward. I heard him shoot back the bolt of the outer door and a moment later I stood alone in the garden. The sun had set and the cold spring dusk was falling. Lights shone here and there in the long front of the villa; the statues glimmered gray among the thickets. Through the window-pane of the chapel I caught the faint red gleam of the Virgin’s lamp; but I turned my back on it and walked away. * * * * * All night I lay like a heretic on the fire. Before dawn there came a call from the villa. The Count had received a second summons from Milan and was to set out in an hour. I hurried down the cold dewy path to the lake. All was new and hushed and strange as on the day of resurrection; and in the dark twilight of the garden alleys the statues stared at me like the shrouded dead.