the sun began to decline.
This was the part of the house most frequented and liked by the family.
They could see their neighbors even when they were at work in their
houses, and could exchange gossip and stir the polenta at the same
time. The other side of the house they avoided. It was lonely and it was
sunny. For Italians would have the sun, like the Lord, to be for ever
knocking at the door and for ever shut out. It must shine upon their
outer walls, but not by any means enter their windows.

As years passed, however, there grew to be one exception in this regard.
Sister Silvia loved not the town with its busy streets, nor the front
windows with their gossiping heads thrust out or in. She had her own
chamber on the Campagna side, and there she sat the livelong day with
knitting or sewing, never going out, except at early morning to hear
mass. There her mother accompanied her--a large, self-satisfied woman
beside a pallid little maiden who never raised her eyes. Or, if her
mother could not go, Matteo stalked along by her side, and with his
black looks made everybody afraid to glance her way. Nobody liked to
encounter the two black eyes of Matteo Guai. It was understood that the
knife in his belt was sharp, and that no scruple of conscience would
stand between him and any vengeance he might choose to take for any
affront he might choose to imagine.

After mass, then, and the little work her mother permitted the girl to
do for health's sake, Silvia sat alone by her window and looked out on
the splendor which her eyes alone could appreciate. There lay the
Campagna rolling and waving for miles and miles around, till the
Sabines, all rose and amethyst, hemmed it in with their exquisite wall,
and the sea curved a gleaming sickle to cut off its flowery passage, or
the nearer mountains stood guard, almost covered by the green spray it
threw up their rocky sides. She sat and stared at Rome while her busy
fingers knit--at the wonderful city where she was one day to go and be a
nun, where the pope lived and kings came to worship him. In the morning
light the Holy City lay in the midst of the Campagna like her mother's
wedding-pearls when dropped in a heap on their green cushion; and Silvia
knelt with her face that way and prayed for a soul as white, for she
was to be the spouse of Christ, and her purity was all that she could
bring Him as a dowry. But when evening came, and that other airy sea of
fine golden mist flowed in fro