The gesture made her weep anew, for it was like human kindness. She hid
her face in her handkerchief, and he saw her wipe the tears away again
and again.

Claudio remembered a note he carried. It had been written the night
before--not with any hope of her ever seeing it, but, as he had written
her hundreds of notes before, pouring out his heart into them because it
was too full to bear without that relief. He took the note out, but how
should he give it to her? The window was too far above for him to toss
so light a thing unless it should be weighted with a stone; and he could
not throw a stone at Silvia's window. He held it up, and, that she might
see it more clearly, tore up a handful of red poppies and laid it white
on the blossoms that were a deep red by night.

Silvia understood, and after a moment's study dropped him down the ball
of her knitting; and soon the note came swaying up through the still air
resting on its cushion of poppies, for Claudio had wound the thread
about both flowers and letter.

He smiled with an almost incredulous delight as he saw the package
arrive safely at its destination and caught afterward the faint red
light of the lamp that Silvia had taken down from before her Madonna to
read the note by. Since she was a little thing only five or six years
old his heart had turned toward her, and her small white face had been
to him the one star in a dim life. He still kept two or three tiny
flowers she had given him years before when his family and hers were
coming together down from Monte San Silvestro at the other side of
Monte Compatri. The two children, with others, had stopped to stick
fresh flowers through the wire screen before the great crucifix halfway
up the mountain, and Silvia had given Claudio these blossoms. He had
laid them away with his treasures and relics--the bit of muslin from the
veil of Our Lady of Loretto, the almost invisible speck from the cord of
St. Francis of Assisi and the little paper of the ashes of Blessed
Joseph Labre. In those days he was the little priest and she the little
nun, and their companions stood respectfully back for them. Now he was
no more the priest, and she was up there in her window against the sky
reading the note he had written her.

This is what the note said:

"My heart is breaking for your sorrow. Why should such eyes as yours be
permitted to weep? Who is there to wipe those tears away? Oh that I
might catch them as they fall! Drop me