For a moment he held her in close embrace, then his arms fell, as if paralyzed, from about her. He drew back one quick step, a look crossing his face that startled her even more than his strange unexplained words. "There where I go, you could not follow me ever," he said at last with the resolution of despair. "I am bound by a sacred oath to leave the world. I have no right to ask any woman for her love! Henceforth, my home--this castle--must be a dream, a memory to me, and you, Ilaria, will stand as far above me as yonder star soars above the earth! Ilaria! I have pledged my word to my father that I will bid farewell to life and happiness, to take in their stead the lonely vows of a Benedictine monk!" There was a dead silence. For a moment she looked at him, as if trying fully to comprehend what it was he had said. Then his meaning pierced her brain. She shrank slowly away from him, then stood quite still, her eyes wide and dark with horror, her face white, as a mask of death. A great icy wave of silence seemed to have swept between them, shutting them out from the world of life. In an instant all the softness and gentleness of her manner dropped from her like a discarded garment. She drew her trailing robes about her as if she dreaded contamination from him. A single petal from the flower he wore had fallen upon her breast. She brushed it from where it nestled. It fluttered down upon the grass. "A monk! And you have dared to touch me!" she hissed, as if she would have spat upon him. A mist came over Francesco's eyes. For a few moments he was conscious of nothing. All life and expression had gone from his face. He did not see the flood of grief, the anguish and the wounded pride that prompted her action. He only saw her turn about without another word, and move swiftly from him towards the castle court, her eyes blinded with tears. Like one dazed, Francesco stood and stared at the spot whence she had gone. He saw and heard nothing save in memory. His white garb shimmered in the moonlight with more life in its purity than there was in his face. His soul was wrapped in awful bitterness at his destiny,--the punishment for his father's sin. He had not told her. He had told no one. Twice on the same day he had been misunderstood, his integrity assailed. He had hoped and prayed for understanding. His prayer had been denied. None there was who understood, none who even vaguely guessed the enormity of the sacrifice. Pity only he had encountered, a pity akin to contempt, from those whose cause he had seemingly deserted; disdain from her whose lips might have alleviated the burden of his destiny by a blessing that he might take with him on his lonely, solitary road. How long he stood thus, his limbs benumbed, paralyzed with grief, afraid to move, almost afraid to breathe, he knew not. An icy hand seemed to clutch his heart.