It was the first sunny day after endless days of rain. How he had longed for the sun, thinking when it came that it would ease his heart and clear his brain! But no sun could dispel these shadows. He was a fool when, two months before, he had said to himself, on entering that house, "It is beautiful here; so still, so peaceful, every trouble must vanish away." For his tortured mind there was no earthly refuge. It had been a delusion, also, when, a few days before, the nurse had placed in his arms his new-born boy, and he had murmured, "Thanks, Merciful One, for the angel who is to save me and lead me upwards!" He was a lovely child, with the mother's auburn hair and the father's dark eyes, who, the nurse assured the Signor Conte, smiled when he saw him. But it seemed to Agenor that the dark eyes threatened him, and the tiny hand pushed him down into deeper damnation. Things had turned out differently from what he had imagined as he sat by the bedside of the poor girl before he agreed to that frightful comedy. Then he had only thought of his disgrace when his deceit should be discovered. How his life was to take form after he had given her soul this opiate, or what the awaking would be--of that he had not thought. There would be time enough to consider all that. Perhaps the step might lead into a garden surrounded with prison walls; but that would be an Eden compared with the dark torture-cell in which he had felt himself after his conversation with the physician, and before that clever scoundrel had given his advice. There was always the disgrace of a discovery! But it was not likely; and, even so, it was less of a disgrace to the name of Baranowski than a marriage with a Jewess. He was forced into it to save his beloved's life! Had he chosen death, she would have followed him, and would that have been an easier solution of the difficulty?