what
impression did she make?" On reaching the gate he turned to him he had
called Benedetto, and scrutinised his face closely--a fleshless, pallid,
intellectual face, in which he read no sign of agitation. The eyes met
his wonderingly, almost as if questioning: "Why do you look at me thus?"
The monk said to himself: "Probably he did not recognise her, or he
supposes me to be unaware of her arrival." He passed his arm through
his companion's, holding him close, and in silence turned to the left
towards the dark and noisy gorge of the Anio. When they had walked on
a few paces under the trees which border the road, he said: "Do you not
wish to question me about the meeting?" There was more tenderness in his
tone than the commonplace words demanded. His companion answered:

"Yes, tell me about it."

The voice was husky and devoid of interest. Don Clemente said to
himself: "He certainly recognised her!" Then he talked of the meeting,
but as one preoccupied with other thoughts, without warmth, without
details; nor did his companion once interrupt him with questions or
comments.

"We separated," he said, "without having come to any conclusion; this
was partly owing to the arrival of some foreigners. So I was not able
to arrange with Signor Giovanni about you. But I think some of us,
at least, will meet again tomorrow. And you yourself," he added
hesitatingly, "do you, or do you not feel inclined to return?"

Benedetto, walking steadily on, answered in the same submissive tone as
before: "Are the foreign ladies I saw going to remain?"

Don Clemente pressed his arm very hard.

"I do not know," he said, adding, much moved, and with another pressure
of the arm: "If I had only known--!"

Benedetto opened his lips to speak, but checked himself. They proceeded
thus in silence towards the two black cliffs in the noisy ravine, and
leaving the main road, which turns to cross the Anio by the Ponte di San
Mauro, took the mule-path leading to the convents, which winds up to
the cliff on the left. The enormous, slanting mass of rock before them
seemed to Don Clemente at that moment the symbol of a demoniacal power
standing in Benedetto's way; so, too, the gathering darkness seemed to
him symbolically threatening, and threatening also the ever-increasing,
ever-deepening roar of the lonely river.

Beyond the oratory of San Mauro, where the mule-path to the convents
turns to the left, running along the side of the hill towards the
M