Then the mist in his eyes cleared suddenly, and he saw the figure below the face, wreathed in a floating web of moonlight, through which white limbs gleamed, while the dusky hair streamed behind it as a cloud. Again, as he looked, the form was flying from him upon a great white horse. And as it flew, it looked back at him with laughing, witch-like eyes, Ilaria's eyes, as he was wont to see them, and in its hand it bore a wan pale flame which was his soul. And, with the fleeting vision, there came to him the realization that he had forever lost that for which all men strive, which all men hold most dear: life and love; and all his being leaped to the fierce desire to break the oath that bound him to that other sphere,--the Church. But fast as his good steed went, with ears laid back and neck outstretched and body flattened to the desperate headlong stride, that great white horse went faster, bearing ever just beyond his reach the slender form veiled in misty moonbeams, the face with the laughing eyes and the marble-cold disdain. He laughed aloud in answer, caught up in the whirlwind of his furious speed; heaven and earth held nothing for him but the frenzy of desire. Fire of life, the life he had cast from him, coursed through his veins; the chase was life itself, exultant, all-conquering, sublime. He had no eyes for the road ahead. Ahead was the darkness of the great forests. A stride, and he was within their shadows. The moon was blotted out by the blackness of the trees; and with it had faded the vision, gone like a wreath of smoke, or a dream that is lost in darkness. Francesco reeled in his saddle; his steed thundered on, the reins loose upon its neck, through the damp silence of the wood, where night hung heavy, thence out into the open, where again the road gleamed white and desolate beneath the moon. And at last the moon was gone and the light went out of the world, and he knew himself for a soul cast into outer darkness. His mind was blank. He knew not whether he lived or died, nor did he care. He lived in a nebulous void of gray unconsciousness, horribly empty of all thought and all sensation. And thus he rode onward on the road to his destiny. End of Book the First. Book the Second THE PILGRIMAGE CHAPTER I THE VIGIL OF SANTA MARIA ASSUNTA On the summit of a conical hill, rising above the great amphitheatre of forests that skirt the sunny Apulian plains, upon the ruins of a temple to Apollo and in a grove sacred to Venus here, in the sixth century had arisen the model of western monasticism, the cloisters of Monte Cassino.