She was lost to him,--always he had known it, known the hopelessness of his passion, all the sweeter for the bitterness that was in it,--but never until then had the knowledge so come home to him. He would have liked to force his way in among these smirking, soft cavaliers, and tear her from their midst; in his hot eyes there raged hate and love. His thoughts maddened him. This was her life,--and what was his? She would leave him the prey of all the devils of jealousy and fear, which tore his breast. He groaned aloud, and dropped his face in his hands, a strange figure of desperate longing, desperate bewilderment, rebellion and pain. He shook to the primal passions of love and hate that tore him, love for one,--hate for all that had gone to make the conditions of his life what they must be; according to the measure of his pain he suffered in fierce revolt against the mocking Fates that were stronger than he. His place was by her side, at the festal board,--and while another had purchased and possessed her body, her soul was his,--his,--his, for all time and all eternity. He it was who had waked her heart from its empty sleep, he who taught it first to live and love,--he, her soul's lord, even as the other her body's master,--he, the monk! "Will the wound in your heart heal, when I shall have gone--perhaps forever?" he muttered, "or will your love fade and die? It may be that it shall be never quite forgotten,--that in after days a word, a song, the fragrance of a flower shall revive a dim memory. But my love must last,--to burn and sear.--Ah, beloved! We had no right to happiness, you and I! But wherefore not? And who decreed it so? Long months have I lain in darkness, for I dreamed of the time when I should come to you! Now the dream has gone from me! On all the earth there is none so lonely, as I am!"-- Again he buried his face in his hands, crouching against the wall. The music of unseen players rose to him like a breath from that scarcely vanished past playing upon him; calloused body and sensitive tortured soul, conjuring forth visions of dead golden hours, weaving its own poignant spell. Voices from the hall mingled with it, in talk and heedless laughter. When life was gay and careless, when wine was red and eyes were bright and faces fair,--who would pause to give thought to another's sorrow? And he--a monk!-- Minutes dropped away, link by link, from the golden chain of Time. A faint gleam of light playing on Francesco's features revealed the scarring passion in his face, signs visible of the chaos of inward tumult which tore him, of the slow forces gathering for the inevitable battle waged somewhere, somehow, by every human soul. And that face, haggard, with haunted shadowy eyes, looked all at once strangely purged of the heat of its passion, for on it was the presage of the fierce, slow travail of spirit rending flesh.