She flung herself before the picture, lay with her forehead to the ground, her hands spread far from her, and seemed to pray. Between the murmurs and groans of the unhappy girl the man heard the alarm of the dog, while the moon now gained its full power and illuminated the whole room. And now before he could collect himself or speak a word he felt her arms about his neck again, her mouth on his throat and hot tears falling over his face. “Do not go to your death, Filippo!” sobbed the poor girl. “If you stay here with me, who will ever find you? Let them talk as they will, the crowd of murderers, the cowardly wretches, more detestable than the wolves of the Apennines! Yes,” she said, and looked up at him through her streaming tears, “you will stay. The Madonna has sent you to me--that I might save you. Filippo, I do not know what angry words I spoke, but that they were angry I felt by the icy contraction here at my heart from which the words relieved me. Forgive me for that. It puts me in hell to think that love can be forgotten and loyalty trodden under foot. Let us sit down here and consider the matter. Do you wish a new house? We will build one. A change of company? We will send every one away, even Nina, even the old dog shall go. And if you think then they may betray you--why we will go ourselves, even to-day, now. I know all the paths, and before the sun rises we will be deep among the ravines on our way toward the north, and wandering, wandering to Genoa, to Venice, wherever you will.” “Stop!” said he sternly. “It is enough folly. You can not be my wife, Fenice. Even if they do not kill me to-morrow, it will not be for long, for I know how I am in their toils.” Quietly but firmly he released his neck from her arms. “See! my child,” he continued, “things are unhappy enough as they stand, and we ought not to make them worse through want of reason. Perhaps when you hear of my death later, your eyes will be resting on a husband and beautiful children, and you will be thankful the dead man of this night had more wisdom than you, even as in that other night you had more wisdom than he. Let me go to rest now. Go you, too, and take care we do not see each other again in the morning. You have a good reputation, as I learnt from my contrabbandieri on the way here. Should we see each other in the morning, and should you make a scene--you understand, my child? And now, good night, good night, Fenice!” Then once more he begged her earnestly for her hand. But she did not give it to him. She looked absolutely white in the moonlight; her brows and lowered eyelashes all the darker. “Have I not sufficiently atoned for having enjoyed seven years ago one long night of too much happiness? And now he wills that this thousand-times accursed happiness shall make me unhappy again, and this time for the length of an eternity? No, no, no! I will never let him go! I would dishonor myself before all men if he should go away and die.”