nawing with her
lovely teeth the jagged leaf of one of her carnations. "Yes, he is rich,
Taddeo. That is why my father sold me to him. Taddeo is rich: he has
gold in the ground, in the trees, in the rafters and the stones of the
house; he has gold in Roman banks; he has gold in foreign scrip, and in
ships, and in jewels, and in leases: he is rich. And he lives like a
gray spider in the cellar-corner. He shuts me up here. We eat black
bread, we see no living soul: once in the year or so I go to Orte or to
Penna. And I am twenty-three years old, and I can read my own face in
the mirror." She paused; her breast heaved, her beautiful low brows drew
together in bitter fury at her fate: she had no thought of me.

I waited, mute. I did not dare to speak.

It was all true: she was the wife of Taddeo Marchioni, shut here as in a
prison, with her youth passing and her loveliness unseen, and her angry
soul consuming itself in its own fires. I loved her: what use was that
to her--a man who had naught in all the world but the strength of his
sinews and muscles?

She remembered me suddenly, and gave me a gesture of dismissal: "Take
your fish to the woman; I cannot pay you for them; I have never as much
as a bronze coin. But--you may come back another day. Bring more--bring
more." Then with a more imperious gesture she made me leave her.

I stumbled out of the old dark, close-shuttered house into the burning
brilliancy of the August day, giddy with passion and with hope. She knew
I loved her, and yet she bade me return!

I know not how much, how little, that may mean in other lands, but here
in Italy it has but one language--language enough to make a lover's
heart leap like the wild goat. Yet hope is perhaps too great a word to
measure rightly the timid joy that filled my breast. I lay in the
shepherd's hut wide awake that night, hearing the frogs croak from the
Lagherello and the crickets sing in the hot darkness. The hut was empty:
shepherd and sheep and dogs were all gone up to the higher grounds
amongst the hills. There were some dry fern-plants in a corner of it. I
lay on these and stared at the planets above me throbbing in the
intense blue of the skies: they seemed to throb, they seemed alive.

A mile away, between me and the stars, was the grand black pile of Sant'
Aloisa.

Christ! it was strange! I had led a rough life, I had been no saint. I
had always been ready for jest or dance or intrigue with a pretty woman,
and