perienced before for any fellow-creature.

Instead of beholding in her one whom I had dragged with me into my pit
of sin and whom it was incumbent upon my manhood thenceforth to shelter
and protect from the consequences of my own iniquity, I attributed to
her the blame of all that had befallen.

To-day I know that in so doing I did no more than justice. But it was
not justly done. I had then no such knowledge as I have to-day by which
to correct my judgment. The worst I had the right to think of her in
that hour was that her guilt was something less than mine. In thinking
otherwise was it that I took that last step to the very bottom of the
hell that I had myself created for myself that night.

The rest was as nothing by comparison. I have said that it was not by
act or speech that I added to the sum of my iniquities; and yet it was
by both. First, in that fiercely echoed "We?" that I hurled at her to
strike her from me; then in my precipitate flight alone.

How I stumbled from that room I scarcely know. The events of the time
that followed immediately upon Fifanti's death are all blurred as the
impressions of a sick man's dream.

I dimly remember that as she backed away from me until her shoulders
touched the wall, that as she stood so, all white and lovely as any
snare that Satan ever devised for man's ruin, staring at me with mutely
pleading eyes, I staggered forward, avoiding the sight of that dreadful
huddle on the floor, over which Busio was weeping foolishly.

As I stepped a sudden moisture struck my stockinged feet. Its nature
I knew by instinct upon the instant, and filled by it with a sudden
unreasoning terror, I dashed with a loud cry from the room.

Along the passage and down the dark stairs I plunged until I reached
the door of the house. It stood open and I went heedlessly forth. From
overhead I heard Giuliana calling me in a voice that held a note of
despair. But I never checked in my headlong career.

Fifanti's mule, I have since reflected, was tethered near the steps. I
saw the beast, but it conveyed no meaning to my mind, which I think was
numbed. I sped past it and on, through the gate, round the road by the
Po, under the walls of the city, and so away into the open country.

Without cap, without doublet, without shoes, just in my trunks and shirt
and hose, as I was, I ran, heading by instinct for home as heads the
animal that has been overtaken by danger whilst abroad. Never since
Phidippide