f whispering a prayer; once
more she looked searchingly across the garden, then nodded almost
imperceptibly, and at the instant someone who must hitherto have been
crouching at her feet swung across the sill into the open. It was
Lorenzi. He flew rather than walked across the gravel into the alley,
which he crossed barely ten yards from Casanova, who held his breath
as he lay behind the bench. Lorenzi, hastening on, made his way down a
narrow strip of grass running along the wall, and disappeared from view.
Casanova heard a door groan on its hinges--the very door doubtless
through which he, Olivo, and the Marchese had reentered the garden
on the previous day--and then all was still. Marcolina had remained
motionless. As soon as she knew that Lorenzi was safely away, she drew a
deep breath, and closed grating and window. The curtain fell back into
its place, and all was as it had been. Except for one thing; for now, as
if there were no longer any reason for delay, day dawned over house and
garden.

Casanova was still lying behind the bench, his arms outstretched before
him. After a while he crept on all fours to the middle of the alley, and
thence onward till he reached a place where he could not be seen from
Marcolina's window or from any of the others. Rising to his feet with an
aching back, he stretched body and limbs, and felt himself restored to
his senses, as though re-transformed from a whipped hound into a human
being--doomed to feel the chastisement, not as bodily pain, but as
profound humiliation.

"Why," he asked himself, "did I not go to the window while it was still
open? Why did I not leap over the sill? Could she have offered any
resistance; would she have dared to do so; hypocrite, liar, strumpet?"

He continued to rail at her as though he had a right to do so, as though
he had been her lover to whom she had plighted troth and whom she had
betrayed. He swore to question her face to face; to denounce her before
Olivo, Amalia, the Marchese, the Abbate, the servants, as nothing better
than a lustful little whore. As if for practice, he recounted to himself
in detail what he had just witnessed, delighting in the invention of
incidents which would degrade her yet further. He would say that she had
stood naked at the window; that she had permitted the unchaste caresses
of her lover while the morning wind played upon them both.

After thus allaying the first vehemence of his anger, he turned
to consider whet