“Believe me, Donna Micaela,” he said, “it will be accomplished in less than seven years. In the year nineteen hundred it will be ready. Then martyrs will have bled; then apostles will have spoken; then shall crowds upon crowds have been won over! We, the rightful sons of the earth, shall have the victory! And she shall lie before us in all her loveliness; she shall bring us beauty, bring us pleasure, bring us knowledge, bring us health!” Gaetano’s voice began to tremble, and tears quivered in his eyes. He went forward to the edge of the terrace, and he stretched out his arms as if to embrace the moonlit earth. “You are so dazzlingly beautiful,” he said, “so dazzlingly beautiful!” And Donna Micaela for a moment thought she felt his grief over all the sorrow that lay under the surface of beauty. She saw life full of vice and suffering, like a dirty river filled with the stench of uncleanliness, wind through the glistening world of beauty. “And no one can enjoy you,” said Gaetano; “no one can dare to enjoy you. You are untamed, and full of whims and anger. You are uncertainty and peril; you are sorrow and pain; you are want and shame; you are the force that grinds; you are everything terrible that can be named, because the people have not wished to make you better. “But your day will come,” he said, triumphantly. “Some day they will turn to you with all their love; they will not turn to a dream, which gives nothing and is good for nothing.” She interrupted him roughly. She began to fear him more and more. “So it is true that you have had no success in England?” “What do you mean?” “People say that the great master, to whom Miss Tottenham sent you, has said that you--” “What has he said?” “That you and your images suited Diamante, but nowhere else.” “Who says such things?” “People think so, because you are so changed.” “Since I am a socialist.” “Why should you be one if you had been successful?” “Ah, why--? You do not know,” he continued, with a laugh, “that my master in England himself was a socialist. You do not know that it was he who taught me these opinions--” He paused, and did not go on with the controversy. He went over to the bench where he had been sitting when she came, and brought back a statuette. He handed it to Donna Micaela. He seemed to wish to say: “See for yourself if you are right.” She took it, and held it up in the moonlight. It was a Mater Dolorosa in black marble. She could see it quite plainly. She could also recognize it. The image had her own features. It intoxicated her for a moment. In the next she was filled with horror. He, a socialist; he, an unbeliever; he dared to create a Madonna! And he had given the image her features! He entangled her in his sin! “I have done it for you, Donna Micaela,” he said.