Ilaria's head had drooped over his; her eyes wandered blindly over the ground. Then a warm drop fell to the stone at her feet. During his recital the very soul in Francesco seemed to have withered with dread, and he seemed to shrivel up bodily and to grow feeble and old and wilted, as a leaf that the frost has touched. "The memory pains you," she said at last. He bit his lips. "Deem you, I forget when I am silent? But it is not the thing itself that haunts me! It is the fact that I have lost the power over myself--" "You have suffered--" "It is the fact that I have come to the end of my courage,--to the point where I find myself a coward!" "Surely there is a limit to what one may bear--" "And he who has once reached that limit never knows when he may reach it again!" He looked up with a sudden piteous catching of the breath. "What will you do?" she spoke after a pause. He held her hands in a close, passionate clasp. A silence that seemed to have no end had fallen about them. "My allotted task," he said at last, in a voice more dead than alive. "No,--no,--no--!" she started up suddenly. "Cannot you see,--will you never understand--oh! the bitterness, the misery of it all!" She clung to him with all her might. "Come away with me! What have you to do with this dead world of priests and monks! They are full of the dust of bygone ages! Come out of this plague-ridden Church,--come with me into the sunlight! I love you--I have always loved you,--always--" She bent blindly towards him. "Take me away from here,--Francesco,--take me away from here! Since I came here my feet seem to have grown heavy with this lotus-laden air. At times it sweeps over me like desperation,--I lose the faculty of thinking, I lose the power over myself!" "I thought you were at Astura!" he said tentatively, the affair in the Red Tower flashing through his consciousness. She gave a quick start.