my strained nerves.

"'Tis all I can do for thee!" I muttered, incoherently. "May Christ
forgive thee, though I cannot!"

And covering my eyes to shut out the sight before me I turned away. I
hurried in a sort of frenzy toward the stairway--on reaching the lowest
step I extinguished the torch I carried. Some impulse made me glance
back--and I saw what I see now--what I shall always see till I die! An
aperture had been made through the roof of the vault by the fall of the
great stone, and through this the fitful moon poured down a long
ghostly ray. The green glimmer, like a spectral lamp, deepened the
surrounding darkness, only showing up with fell distinctness one
object--that slender protruding wrist and hand, whiter than Alpine
snow! I gazed at it wildly--the gleam of the jewels down there hurt my
eyes--the shine of the silver crucifix clasped in those little waxen
fingers dazzled my brain-and with a frantic cry of unreasoning terror,
I rushed up the steps with a maniac speed--opened the iron gate through
which SHE would pass no more, and stood at liberty in the free air,
face to face with a wind as tempestuous as my own passions. With what
furious haste I shut the entrance to the vault! with what fierce
precaution I locked and doubled-locked it! Nay, so little did I realize
that she was actually dead, that I caught myself saying
aloud--"Safe--safe at last! She cannot escape--I have closed the secret
passage--no one will hear her cries--she will struggle a little, but it
will soon be over--she will never laugh any more--never kiss--never
love--never tell lies for the fooling of men!--she is buried as I
was--buried alive!"

Muttering thus to myself with a sort of sobbing incoherence, I turned
to meet the snarl of the savage blast of the night, with my brain
reeling, my limbs weak and trembling--with the heavens and earth
rocking before me like a wild sea--with the flying moon staring aghast
through the driving clouds--with all the universe, as it were, in a
broken and shapeless chaos about me; even so I went forth to meet my
fate--and left her!

* * * * *

Unrecognized, untracked, I departed from Naples. Wrapped in my cloak,
and stretched in a sort of heavy stupor on the deck of the
"Rondinella," my appearance apparently excited no suspicion in the mind
of the skipper, old Antonio Bardi, with whom my friend Andrea had made
terms for my voyage, little aware of the real identity of the pas