We came again to the hostel; when we entered, we walked apart. Quickly, as though seized with sudden misgiving, Fiesole left me. I heard her footstep mounting the stairs and saw the light spring up in her window. Every other window was in darkness. From where I sat in the courtyard I could see the shadow of her figure groping, and her arms uplifted as she unbound her hair. The light went out. I wondered if she watched me. I listened to hear her stirring; I could hear nothing. In the dim quiet, shut out from the excitement of her presence, I had leisure to reflect on whither I was going. I drew apart from myself and eyed my doings impartially. It was a whim of curiosity that had brought me to Paris--one of those instinctive decisions which construct a destiny. The sight of her as Lucrezia had stabbed me to remorse, and then to folly. That she had hated me up to last night and that the desire of her wild heart had been to torture me, I did not doubt; but I thought that there were moments in this day when she had loved me with the old uncalculating kindness. What was her intention now? Unaccountably out of the past, Fiesole had returned--Fiesole, the girl-woman I had loved as a boy before Vi. I felt like a broken gamester who has discovered an overlooked coin in his pocket after having believed himself penniless. So strange was this happening that it could not be fortuitous--we had met because we had been piloted. All seeming failure of the past would take on an aspect of design and would appear a straight road leading to this moment, were our journeyings to end in marriage. And, though she would not own it, she needed the protection of a man who loved her to guard her against her success and self-reliance. My thoughts ran on, picturing the home and little children we would have. Children would be walls about our love, making it secure. For these I was hungry--desperately afraid lest the hope of them should be withdrawn. In imagination they seemed already mine, I would speak my heart out: she should understand before it was too late that my need was also hers. I entered the hostel. In the office the old woman nodded above her knitting. I roused her and asked for my candle. “Ah, Monsieur,” she said in apology, “I had not thought. For a room so small I supposed that one would be sufficient. I have given Madame the candle. If Monsieur will wait, I will fetch another.” In my surprise I told her that it did not matter. I felt my way up the unlit stairs. At the bedroom-door I knocked. Fiesole’s voice just reached me, whispering to me to enter. On the threshold I paused, peering into the darkness. The floor was bare; there was little furniture. In the shadows against the wall, a canopied, high-mattressed bed loomed mountainous. Through the window, reaching almost to my feet, a ray of moonlight slanted; in it, gleaming white, stood Fiesole.