Just as this Gibbon of the Princess, whom they were burying here, recalled before his soul that stormy Friday, he espied Linda, not far from the Dream-temple, on the arm of a seeing gentlewoman. She gave him, according to her manner before others, only a slight greeting, and said to the woman, "Justa, stay here in the Dream-temple; I am going to walk up and down here." By this limitation of herself to the visual range of the Dream-temple she excluded every fair, visible sign of love, and Albano knew already that silent contentment of hers, with the mere presence of the beloved one, just as he did sometimes the wildness of her sweet lips. When he touched her with trembling, and saw her again near him, then did this powerful being come back to him with the whole divine past. But he deferred not the infernal question, "Linda, who was with thee on Friday evening?" "No one, dearest; where?" replied she. "In the flute-dell," he stammered. "My blind maiden," she answered, calmly. "Who else?" he asked. "God! thy tone distresses me," said she. "Roquairol killed the ape that night. Did he meet thee?" "O horrible murderer! Me?" he cried; "I was travelling all night long; I was not with thee in any flute-dell." "Speak out, man," cried Linda, grasping him violently with both hands; "didst thou not write to me of having given up thy journey, and then didst thou not come?" "No, nothing like it," said he; "all infernal lies. The dead monster Roquairol used my voice,--thy eyes,--and so it was,--tell the rest." "_Jesu Maria!_" screamed she, struck by the dashing flood into which the black cloud burst, and grasped with both arms through the leafy branches of the wooded avenue, and pressed them to her, and said supplicatingly, "Ah, Albano, thou wast certainly with me." "No, by the Almighty, not! Tell the rest," said he. "Fly from me forever; I am _his_ widow!" said she, solemnly. "That thou remainest," said he, severely, and called Justa out of the temple of dream. "So it must live on,--thy pain, my pain: I see thee nevermore. I will say a farewell to thee. Say thou none to me!" said he. She was silent, and he went. Justa came, and he still heard her praying in the arbor: "Leave me, O God, this eclipse to-morrow; spare the gloomy widow thy daylight!" The maiden roused her, took her by the hand, and she rejoiced, when hanging on her arm, in her night-blindness. Albano went out into the night. All at once he stood as if he had been carried up on a jagged, rocky peak, below which dashed a foaming stream. He turned back and said, "Thou mistakest, evil genius; I loathe suicide; it is too easy, and belongs to ape-murderers,--but there is something better, and thou shalt attend me."