ve supplied
me. Tell me, Lazzaro, what was it led you to suppose that I still lived?

"I did not suppose it," I blundered like a fool, never seeing whither
her question led.

"You did not?" she cried, in deep surprise; and now, when it was
too late, I understood. "What was it, then, induced you to lift the
coffin-lid?"

"You ask me more than I can tell you," I answered, almost roughly. "Do
you thank God, Madonna, that it was so, and never plague your mind to
learn the 'why' of it."

She looked at me with eyes that were singularly luminous.

"But I must know," she insisted. "Have I not the right? Tell me now: Was
it that you wished to see my face again before they gave me over to the
grave?"

"Perhaps it was that, Madonna," I answered in confusion, avoiding her
glance. Then--"Shall we be going?" I suggested fiercely. But she never
heeded that suggestion.

She spoke as if she had not heard, and the words she uttered seemed to
turn me into stone.

"Did you love me then so much, dear Lazzaro?"

I swung round to face her now, and I know that my face was white--whiter
than hers had been when I had beheld her in her coffin. My eyes seemed
to burn in their sockets as they met hers. A madness overtook me and
whelmed my better judgment. I had undergone so much that day through
grief, and that night through a hundred emotions, that I was no longer
fully master of myself. Her words robbed me, I think, of my last
lingering shred of reason.

"Love you, Madonna?" I echoed, in a voice that was as unlike my own as
was the mood that then possessed me. "You are the air I breathe, the
sun that lights my miserable world. You are dearer to me than honour,
sweeter than life. You are the guardian angel of my existence, the saint
to whom I have turned morning and evening in my prayers for grace. Do I
love you, Madonna--?"

And there I paused. The thought of what I did and what the consequences
must be rushed suddenly upon me. I shivered as a man shivers in awaking.
I dropped on my knees before her, bowing my head and flinging wide my
arms.

"Forgive, Madonna," I cried entreatingly. "Forgive and forget. Never
again will I offend."

"Neither forgive nor forget will I," came her voice, charged with an
ineffable sweetness, and her hands descended on my bowed bead, as if
she would bless and soothe me. "I am conscious of no offence that craves
forgiveness, and what you have said I would not forget if I could.
Whence springs this fe