A little later the wrapt expression of his loving eyes as he looks at Beatrice attracts the attention of others and to misdirect them, he feigns love for the lady he calls the screen of truth and writes verses in her honor. On the part of Beatrice there is misunderstanding of the amatory verses he writes at this period and she withholds her greeting. Then, more than ever, he realizes what that salutation meant to him. Deprived of it now, he dwells upon the sweet memory of the salutation: "In the hope of her marvelous salutation there no longer remained to me an enemy, nay, a flame of charity possessed me which made me pardon everyone who had done me wrong." Under the influence of her salutation, Dante tells us that he devised this sonnet: "So gentle and so gracious doth appear My lady when she giveth her salute That every tongue becometh, trembling, mute: Nor do the eyes to look upon her dare Although she hears her praises, she doth go Benignly vested with humility: And like a thing come down, she seems to be, From heaven to earth, a miracle to show. So pleaseth she whoever cometh nigh. She gives the heart a sweetness through the eyes, Which none can understand who doth not prove And from her countenance there seems to move A spirit, sweet, and in Love's very guise, Who to the soul, in going sayeth: 'Sigh.'" (Norton's translation.) Because she now denies to him the bliss of salutation he says: "I went into a solitary place to bathe the earth with most bitter tears." But this misunderstanding is not his only torment. Almost from his second meeting he fears that his beloved will soon die. His prophetic vision becomes an agonising reality when in 1290 in her twenty-fourth year, the eyes that radiated bliss are closed in death. So stunned was he by the blow that his life was despaired of. When he recovered it seemed to him that Florence had lost her gaiety and desolate is mourning the loss of his beloved one. Pilgrims passing on their way to Galicia do not appear to share the general grief. To arouse their sympathy in the loss which the city has sustained the heart-broken poet lover devises a sonnet "in which I set forth that which I had said to myself. Pilgrims: If through your will to hear, awhile ye stay, Truly my heart with sighs declare to me That ye shall afterwards depart in tears. Alas her Beatrice now lost hath she. And all the words that one of her way may say Have virtue to make weep whoever hears." (Norton's translation.) In his great affliction his grieving heart is sustained by his belief in immortality. His vision penetrates the skies and he sees his 'lady of virtue' in glory in the regions of the eternal. "The gentle lady to my mind had come Who, for the sake of her exceeding youth, Had by the Lord most High been ta'en from earth To that calm heaven where Mary hath her home."