he book. "Panormitano!" he roared. "Now, there's a fitting author
for a saint in embryo! There's a fine preparation for the cloister!"

He turned to Giuliana. He put forward his hand and touched her bare
shoulder with his hideous forefinger. She cringed under the touch as if
it were barbed.

"There is not the need that you should render yourself his preceptress,"
he said, with his deadly smile.

"I do not," she replied indignantly. "Agostino has a taste for letters,
and..."

"Tcha! Tcha!" he interrupted, tapping her shoulder sharply. "I had
no thought for letters. There is my Lord Gambara, and there is Messer
Cosimo d'Anguissola, and there is Messer Caro. There is even Pordenone,
the painter." His lips writhed over their names. "You have friends
enough, I think. Leave, then, Ser Agostino here. Do not dispute him with
God to whom he has been vowed."

She rose in a fine anger, and stood quivering there, magnificently tall,
and Juno, I imagined, must have looked to the poets as she looked then
to me.

"This is too much!" she cried.

"It is, madam," he snapped. "I agree with you." She considered him with
eyes that held a loathing and contempt unutterable. Then she looked
at me, and shrugged her shoulders as who would say: "You see how I am
used!" Lastly she turned, and took her way across the lawn towards the
house.

There was a little silence between us after she had gone. I was on fire
with indignation, and yet I could think of no words in which I might
express it, realizing how utterly I lacked the right to be angry with a
husband for the manner in which he chose to treat his wife.

At last, pondering me very gravely, he spoke.

"It were best you read no more with Madonna Giuliana," he said slowly.
"Her tastes are not the tastes that become a man who is about to enter
holy orders." He closed the book, which hitherto he had held open;
closed it with an angry snap, and held it out to me.

"Restore it to its shelf," he bade me.

I took it, and quite submissively I went to do his bidding. But to gain
the library I had to pass the door of Giuliana's room. It stood open,
and Giuliana herself in the doorway. We looked at each other, and seeing
her so sorrowful, with tears in her great dark eyes, I stepped forward
to speak, to utter something of the deep sympathy that stirred me.

She stretched forth a hand to me. I took it and held it tight, looking
up into her eyes.

"Dear Agostino!" she murmured in gratitude