or sound betrayed that something was there more alive than the light of the lamp or the glimmer of the wood embers, which, indeed, fell now and then in white ashes, and broke the utter silence of the place. This silence, however, was much more effectually broken by the entrance of a stout, middle-aged Italian, with a cloak over one of his shoulders, and the _cache-nez_ in his hand in which he was about to muffle his features when he went out. He looked round and round the large room, apparently unable to see the figure in the window, and then, with an impatient exclamation, went to the table and snuffed the blazing wicks and trimmed the lamp. “Just like her, just like her,” he said to himself, “gazing somewhere; never eating, never considering that one must live. If I were to add a slice of salami--though the child is fastidious, she does not eat salami----” “I am here, Niccolo,” said a voice from the window. “So I supposed, signorina; I knew you must be in some corner. May I be permitted to remark that life is not supported by the eyes, but by the mouth? If you will not eat the _cena_ I have prepared for you, what can I do? I cannot take you on my knees and feed you like a baby. Oh, I have done it; I have been obliged to do it, when I had the poor padrone’s authority to sustain me, before now.” “Niccolo,” said the voice, “I shall not want anything more to-night. If you are ready you may go.” “Oh yes, I may go,” said Niccolo fretfully, “not knowing whether I may not find you a little heap of cinders in the morning, or fallen down in the window and frozen to death, Madonna Santissima! without the power to raise yourself up. If you would but have Philomena to stay with you, at least, in case you should want anything.” “I want nothing,” said the girl. She came out of the window, advancing a few steps, but still keeping quite out of the cheerful circle of the light. “No, the signorina wants nothing; the signorina will soon not want anything but a hole in the heretic cemetery beside her father; and when one goes sinfully out of the world by one’s own wickedness, besides being a Protestant and believing nothing, what can one look for? If I were the signorina, I should take very good care as long as I could not to die, and put myself in the power of those beings with the prongs that you see in the Campo Santo. I should take very great trouble, for my part, not to die.” Upon this she came out altogether out of the darkness, and approached the fire. “Do you think that not eating kills people?” she asked. “I cannot eat, I have no appetite, but I do not wish to die.”