He now threw himself on the hard bed and felt the storm raging within him. A few minutes, and he raised one foot about to hasten out and tell her that he had hurt her only that he might heal her; then he stamped on the ground, vexed at such effeminate weakness. “It is the one thing that remains,” he said to himself, “if crimes and misfortunes are to increase no more. Seven years, poor child!” A heavy comb, decorated with little pieces of metal, lay on a small table; he took it up mechanically in his hand. This brought to mind again the abundance of her hair, the proud neck on which it rested, the noble forehead round which it curled, and the browned cheeks. Then he threw the tempter into the trunk, where he saw the neat dresses, kerchiefs for the head, and bits of finery of all sorts, folded together carefully and in order. Slowly he let the lid fall again, and then went to the hole in the wall and looked out. The room lay in the rear of the house, so that none of the other huts of Treppi obstructed his view over the chasm-cleft highlands. Opposite, stretching behind the ravine, was the naked ridge of rocks, bathed in the moon that must now be standing directly over the house. At one side he saw a few sheds, past which a path ran down into the abyss. A forlorn little pine tree, with bare twigs, was trying to take root among the stones; besides this only heather covered the ground, with here and there some pitiable little bush. “Surely,” said he in the stillness, “this is not a place in which to forget what one has loved. I would it were otherwise! Yes, yes, she who has loved me more than finery and flirting and the whispering of cox-combs would be the right wife for me, after all. What eyes would my old Marco make if he saw me suddenly return from my journey with a beautiful wife. Not once would we need to change our abode; and how unhomelike are the innumerable corners of solitude! And it would be good for me, at times--an old grumbler, a laughing child--but folly, folly, Filippo! What would the poor thing do as a widow in Bologna! No, no, none of that! No new sins added to the old mass! I will rise an hour before the others, and steal out and away before a soul in Treppi awakes.”