she saw and heard, it
becomes not me to tread. Donna Matura was of her country, that cheerful,
laughing Midland of the Po, and neither felt the Venetian throb of
pleasure nor conceived the excesses of Venetian pain. Extremes touch on
the Lagoon. Donna Matura saw her gold-haired mistress white and drawn,
saw her witless shaking, saw her tear and rend herself, heard her jerked
words of loathing, blasphemy, and obscene defiance--and fairly fled the
house. "For," as she said, "if words of man or woman could bring the
rafters about our ears, or open a pit to send us lightly whither we all
must go who have heard them, those words which Madam Olimpia spat about
her must surely do it." So much she confessed to afterwards, but no
more; for she stayed nothing more.

Olimpia may have leaned twisting against her wall for about an hour,
mouthing insane babble from her blued lips. It was at least quite dark
when she came to herself, lit the lamp, wiped the cold beads from her
forehead, smoothed and bound her hair. She was not herself, nor looked
to be so; she had a face completely colourless, lips like grey mould,
and burning black eyes. But her hand was steady; she hardly winked; her
breath, which came through her nose, was even, though it whistled rather
sharply. Whatever she was about--and she seemed to be acting a part--she
did with extraordinary care, down to the changing of her crimson dress
for a dark green one. The former had been loose and clinging, made of
velvet; the dark green was of cloth, fitted her close, and, as she
ascertained by a few gestures, gave free play to her arms. She knocked
off her heeled Venetian shoes, whose clatter was familiar to the house,
and bound on flat-soled sandals instead. Over her head she had a black
lace scarf, on her hands leather gauntlets. Lastly, she took from a
press a long, double-edged knife, felt its temper, and stuck it inside
her stocking, under the garter. She made a final hasty sweep of the room
with her unquiet eyes as she went out of it.

The door of the house she knocked upon was opened by a page, who asked
her business.

"Mosca, Captain Mosca, is my business," said she in a whisper.

"The Signor Capitano is occupied, Madonna," replied the boy.

"I know it, I know it," she answered. "But my business is the lady's
business also. I must see them both--and at once. Let me pass."

The page vowed and swore by all the company of Heaven that those were
her actual words. He was