‘It was after a long time, I suppose, that I at last thought of you, oh Beppo! and the thought was like a ray of light in the blackness. One moment before I had been standing by the side of the water, feeling that there was nothing for me to do but to plunge into it. Because, what could there be for anyone like me? Unless I had someone to go to?’ She stopped and looked at him, all the horror of that moment reappearing in her eyes. Signor Giuseppe knew very well what must have passed through her mind as she stood there, fully conscious of all the pitfalls which this naughty world prepares and has in readiness for such as she, if such as she once break through the ring-fence of conventional propriety which fences them in. Spoiled for humble work, not in will, but by the hothouse life of luxury, which had stamped her with the stamp of fashion and distinction in outward appearance, devoid of friends, without money, without ‘reference’--where could she have hidden her misery? Where would she not have been speedily reduced to the alternative of starvation, suicide, or dishonour? Society makes no provision for exceptional cases--its code is that there must not be any exceptional cases, and that such cases have themselves to thank for their situation. ‘For all my awful wretchedness, I shuddered at the thought of killing myself,’ Fulvia went on. ‘Have you not noticed, padre mio, how much more ready these still, cold Northerners are to put an end to themselves than we, who seem to feel so much more? Our thoughts and our feelings are so much less complex than theirs, and violence and interference with the course of nature are so much more foreign to us. Don’t you think so?’ ‘Oh yes, child! It is so much of a fact to me that I have ceased even to think of it as remarkable. Well?’ ‘Well, it all comes to an end: nothing grand, nothing heroic, or violent, or tragic. I thought of you, as I said, and I asked myself, “Would Beppo rather that I should go to him and cast myself on his care and love, and shake him out of his quiet, contented life, and drag him about with me--a wretched, ruined, unhappy woman--or that I should bring all to an end now, in this pond?” In an instant, in a flash of light, I knew what you would think and would feel. I turned away. I felt so bruised, so broken, so crushed, that I could hardly crawl along. I wandered about, looking at the house till I saw the light in your window and knew that you were up. And at last I took courage to go up to where I saw you standing, and--all the rest you know.’ ‘It is the best that could have been done,’ he told her gently. Fulvia was leaning back, utterly exhausted, in her chair. He stroked her hands softly, and there was a long silence, till at last she opened her eyes, and, looking at him fully, and with love unspeakable and trust unbounded, said: