“His slackening steps pause at the gate-- Does she wake or sleep?--the time is late-- Does she sleep now, or watch and wait? She has watched, she has waited long, Watching athwart the golden grate With a patient song.” A mad conceit--an insane fear. And yet--he bent, put a brief hoarse question to a passer-by and learnt the truth. Her mother--dead some months now, as he knew. He breathed out a little laugh of relief, reckless, self-scornful, and pushed on his way. In so far, at least, the occasion was opportune; he might see her, and not be seen. It was for that very purpose he had taken advantage of the sudden armistice to hurry from Lusatia, while the fighting he had been engaged in was suspended, and speed these long leagues back to the Lombard plains. He had travelled day and night; he was war-worn and spent with weariness; yet he would think his pains well recompensed by one glimpse of the loved face. Only for one moment to stay the insatiable hunger of his heart--to acquire new nerve and resolution for the end that could not now be long delayed. He desired, he told himself, to learn that she was reconciled and happy; that the ruin with which he had threatened her young life was averted, and then he would leave her once more, this time never to return. And so men will go out of their way to lie to themselves, knowing that the truth stands steadfast to the good resolution which first inspired it. He put up his horse, and, strolling out, mingled with the people. He was reckless of discovery, as one must be who is reckless of his life. He had timed his approach to the church so fortuitously that he could see, over the heads of the mob, the ducal cortège as it accompanied the carriages. The nearness of her presence--though, penned as he was within that living wall, he could distinguish nothing of it--made his veins throb between rapture and agony. And then he bent himself, as the pressure of the crowd relaxed, and it resigned itself to the long hour of waiting before the reappearance of the august mourners, to edging a passage to some nearer coign of vantage, where he might watch, himself unobserved. His cool persistence--his military bearing and assurance, perhaps--gained him his purpose by degrees. When within two or three of the foremost row, under the shadow of a buttress he stopped and stood fast, abiding the mad moment. The swell of the organ came to him; the sweet voices of the choir. Something seemed to rise in his heart, half-suffocating him. And then a magnetic thrill ran through the crowd, and he knew that he was to face the ordeal.