For a moment he stood motionless--petrified; then, stretching out his arms too, and making a step towards her, he finished the tearing asunder of the veil which she had at last rent. ‘My daughter!’ ‘Oh, help me! help me!’ she said, in the same unnatural voice, as she fell, with the heavy gesture of one whose will no longer controls his movements, into his arms, broken, desperate, recking nothing of showing her mortal anguish, caring no more to hide anything from his eyes, at any rate. He held her up in silence. Neither of them spoke for a long time after they had uttered those fateful words. Her hands grasped his shoulders with the clinging of one who has nothing else to hold by. Her head was prostrate, low upon his breast. Signor Giuseppe’s white hairs mingled with the bright waves and coils of golden brown; his lips touched them, moved, but he uttered no words, till at last, as she raised her face, furrowed with suffering almost out of resemblance to her natural one, he said in a deep voice, coming from his inmost soul: ‘Mia figlia, stand here no more. Come in and tell me what has happened and what you wish.’ ‘Oh, I believe you can do nothing, nothing for me, padre mio! I do not know why I am here--I did not mean to come. I did not mean to leave the side of the pond alive, and yet I came on and on here, because I have something to tell--there is something that someone must know. I am frightened! I had such a horrible dream. At least, I think it was a dream. Well, I will come in. No one will disturb us?’ ‘No one; I am alone. There will be no interruption,’ said he. ‘Come in. Tell me your dream. Perhaps it was no dream after all.’ He drew her within the room, and closed the window at last. Fulvia gazed about her as if bewildered by the lamplight, and by the walls which surrounded her. He took her to a couch which stood against the wall, placed her upon it, and seated himself beside her. She took one of his hands between hers, and, drawing a long sigh, said: ‘How strange this all is! Father, my father, my father! There is someone, after all. Padre mio, what will you do for me?’ ‘Child, anything--anything in the world, when you tell me what it is,’ said he, with love and anguish in his voice. There was something in her whole aspect which frightened him, or, rather, which filled him with vague alarm and apprehension. Signor Giuseppe was not one of the people who are easily frightened. There was, however, something enigmatical in Fulvia’s demeanour--in her great excitement and breathless haste, and in the sudden strange pauses she made, when a curious, bewildered look came over her whole face, and her eyes looked as if they were seeking backwards in her heart for some clue, or purpose, or intention, which she had formed and then lost. ‘What time is it?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Two in the morning,’ he told her.