"Punishment! They are covered with cuts and welts and bruises! Thank Heaven they are still wearing their thick winter clothes--You might have killed them, Egidio, you would have, if you had not been stopped in time. As it is, it is a miracle that they are not maimed for life! Are you mad to think of touching the tender body of a child with a thing like this?" He bent the flexible blade of the foil, "I tell you that if their clothes had not protected them, you would have cut the flesh of those babies to ribbons!" "But look, Rico," Valentini burst forth passionately, "look what they have done! I come in here and I find they have ruined my work, the picture that was to make my reputation--and that I shall have no chance to do again, if I could, for she has gone away!" He wheeled the easel about, and Ferrati gazed aghast on the havoc wrought. "My God, Egidio," he exclaimed, "this is awful!" "And yet you blame me for punishing--" he said bitterly, but Ferrati interrupted him. "You had provocation, I will admit; this is a terrible disappointment. But you are a man, Egidio, and to allow your rage to get the better of you to the extent that you would have murdered--yes, _murdered_ is the word--those innocent children--" "Innocent!" "Yes, certainly, innocent. Can you suppose for a minute that a child of that age would be capable of a deliberate act of malice such as this? Think man, think how easily you might have killed them, and how would you have met your wife with their blood on your hands?" "Oh, Ragna!" said Egidio sneeringly. "Where is she?" "I suppose she is gadding about somewhere, as usual." Valentini looked at him keenly. "That is another thing, in fact it was that I was coming to you about when I heard Carolina's screams of 'murder'. You are not treating your wife as you should, Egidio, and as I was partly responsible for the marriage, I cannot stand aside and let things go on as they have been doing. As your friend, as the friend of both of you, I feel that I can be silent no longer." "So she has been to you with her complaints!" "She has done nothing of the sort; Ragna is not the woman to complain of her husband to anyone--you should know your wife better by this time." He paused, but Valentini his eyes sulkily fixed on the carpet, merely shrugged his shoulders. "No, I speak only of what Virginia and I have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears. You speak slightingly to Ragna and of her, in public; you humiliate her and make her life unbearable. What you say and do in private I have no means of knowing, but I can see that your wife both fears and hates you." "She has an impossible character," said Egidio petulantly, like a child taken to task. Ferrati seemed always to have this mysterious power of domination over him, the result, perhaps, of the man's clear-eyed honesty.