down a handkerchief that has been
wet with them, that I may keep it as a relic. Tell me of some way in
which I can console you and spend my life to serve you."

She read with a mingling of consolation and astonishment. Why, this was
more than her mother cared for her! But perhaps men were really more
strongly loving than women. It would seem so, since God, who knows all,
when He wanted to express His love to mankind, took the form of a man,
not of a woman. Then she considered whether, and how, she should answer
this note, and the result of her considering was this, written hastily
on a bit of paper in which some Agnus Dei had been wrapped:

"I do not know what I ought to write to you, but I thank you for
your kindness. It comforts me, and I have need of comfort. I think,
though, that it may be wrong for you to speak of my handkerchief as
if it were a relic. Relics are things which have belonged to the
saints, and I am not a saint at all, though I hope to become one. I
frequently do wrong. Spend your life in serving God, and pray for
me. You pray in singing, and your singing is very sweet.

SILVIA."

It seemed to her a simple and merely polite note. To him it was as the
spark to a magazine of powder. All the possibilities of his life, only
half hoped or half dreamed of, burst at once into a flame of certainty.
She had need of comfort, and he comforted her! His voice was sweet to
her, and his singing was a prayer!

Silvia should not be a nun. She should break the bond imposed by her
mother, as he had broken that imposed by his parents. She should be his
wife, and they would live in Rome. He knew that his voice would find
bread for them.

All this flashed through his mind as he read, and pressed to his lips
the handkerchief which she had dropped down to him, though it was not a
relic. He lifted his arms upward toward her window with a rapturous joy,
as if to embrace her, but she did not look out again. A little scruple
for having deprived the Madonna for a moment of her lamp had made her
resolve to say at once a decade of the rosary in expiation. He waited
till the sound of closing doors and wandering voices told that the
inhabitants gathered for the evening in the Lungara were separating to
their homes, then went reluctantly away. Matteo would be at home, and
Matteo's face might look down at him from that other window beside
Silvia's. So he also went home, with the moonlight b