from it. He hid his face in his
hands and wept silently. A slight noise above of a shutter being opened;
something soft fell upon his head. With a start, he removed his hands
from his eyes; at his feet lay a tiny wild rose. He shivered! For
several days--either on returning to his hut at night, or on leaving
it in the morning--he had found flowers on his threshold. He had never
removed them. He simply placed them on one side upon a stone, that they
might not be stepped on, that was all. Neither had he ever tried to
discover what hand laid them there. Surely this tiny wild rose had
fallen from the same hand. He did not raise his head, but he understood
that even if he did not lift the rose, or make any movement towards it,
he must, nevertheless, leave the spot. He tried to rise, but his limbs
could, as yet, hardly support him, and he tarried a moment before moving
away. The thunder rumbled again louder and longer. A small door was
pushed open, and a young girl, dressed in black, looked out. She was
fair, and as white as wax; her blue eyes were full of despair and
of tears. Benedetto could not help turning his face towards her. He
recognised the village schoolmistress, whom he had once seen for
a moment at the priest's house. He was already moving away without
greeting her, when she moaned softly: "Hear me!" Stepping back into the
passage she fell upon her knees, stretched out beseeching hands to him,
and dropped her head upon her breast.

Benedetto stopped. He hesitated a moment and then said, with dignified
gravity:

"What do you want of me?"

It had become almost dark. The lightning flashed, the noise of the
thunder filled the miserable little lane, and prevented the two from
hearing each other. Benedetto approached the door.

"I have been told," the young girl answered, without raising her head,
and pausing when the thunder crashed forth, "that you will perhaps be
obliged to leave Jenne. A word spoken by you has given me life, but your
departure will kill me. Repeat that word to me; say it for _me_, for me
alone."

"What word?"

"You were with the _Signor Arciprete_, the parish priest, I was in the
next room with the servant, and the door was open. You said that a
man may deny the existence of God without really being an atheist or
deserving eternal death, if that God, whose existence he denies, be
placed before him in a shape repugnant to his intellect, and if he love
Truth, Virtue, and his fellow-men, and by