But no: there was one who did not forget her--who would perhaps now have heard that she was going away, and be waiting in the mountain-path for her. She hastened to her room, locked the door and went to the window. He made a gesture of haste, and she dropped the ball down to him. This was not the second time that their conversation had been held by means of a thread. Indeed, they had come to talk so every night. At first it had been a few words only, and Silvia's unconsciousness and her sincerity in her intention to follow her mother's will had imposed silence on the young man. But little by little he had ventured, and she had understood; and within the last week there had been no concealments between them, though Silvia still resisted all his prayers to change her resolution and brave her brother. His first note was in her hands in a moment: "Is it possible that what I hear is true? I will not believe it: I will not let you go." "Yes, and I must go," she wrote back. "I have to start at seven in the morning. Dear Claudio, be resigned: there is no help for it." "Silvia, why will you persist in ruining your life and mine? It is a sin. Say that you are too sick to go to-morrow. Stay in bed all day, and by night I will have a rope-ladder for you to come down to me. We can run away and hide somewhere." "I cannot. We could never hide from Matteo: he would find us out and kill us both." "I will go to the Holy Father and tell him all. We could be in Rome early in the morning if we should walk all night." "Matteo would hear us: he hears everything. We should never reach Rome. He would find us wherever we might be hidden. If we were dead and buried he would pull us out of the ground to stab us. I must go. I have sinned in having so much intercourse with you. Be resigned, Claudio. Be a good man, and we shall meet in heaven. The earth is a terrible place: I am afraid of it. I want to shut myself up in the convent and be at peace. I fear so much that I tremble all the time. Say addio." "I cannot. Will you stay in bed to-morrow, and let me try if I cannot go to Rome?" "Say addio, Claudio. I dare not stay here any longer: I hear some one outside my door. I say addio to you now. I shall not drop the ball again." She did not even draw it up again, for the thread caught on a nail in the wall and broke. And at the same time there was a knock at her door. "Silvia, why do you not go to bed?" Matteo called out: "I hear you up." "I am going now," she made haste to answer, and in her terror threw herself on the bed without undressing. She wondered if Matteo could hear her heart beat through the wall or see how she was shaking.