t her, and they did not even seek to
salute her when they met her going to and from church in the morning.
To these simple citizens, ignorant but reverential, Sister Silvia's
lowered eyelids were as inviolate as the pearl gates of the New
Jerusalem. Besides, to help their reverence, there were the fierce
black eyes and strange reputation of Matteo. So when, a day or two
after her mother's death, his sister begged him to accompany her to
church in the early morning, and leave her in the care of some decent
woman there, Matteo replied that she might go by herself.

She set out for the first time alone on what had ever been to her a
_via sacra_, and was now become a _via dolorosa_, where her tears
dropped as she walked. And going so once, she went again. Pepina, the
elder sister, a widow now, had come home to keep house for Matteo, but
she was too much taken up with work, the care of her two children and
looking out for a second husband to have time to watch Silvia, and
after a few weeks the young girl went as unheeded as a matron in her
daily walk.

At home her life was nearly the same. She mended the clothes from the
washing and knit stockings, and sat at her window and looked off over
the Campagna toward Rome.

One evening she sat there before going to bed and watched the
moonlight turn all the earth to black and silver under the purple
sky--a black like velvet, so deep and soft was it, and a silver like
white fire, clear and splendid, yet beautifully soft. She was feeling
desolate, and her tears dropped down, now and then breaking into sobs.
It had been pleasant to sit there alone when she knew that her mother
was below stairs, strong, healthy and gay. All that life had been as
the oil over which her little flame burned. Lacking it, she grew dim,
just as the floating wick in her little blue vase before the Madonna
grew dim when the oil was gone.

As she wept and heard unconsciously the nightingales, she grew
conscious of another song that mingled with theirs. It was a human
voice, clear and sweet as an angel's, and it sang a melody she knew in
little snatches that seemed to begin and end in a sigh. The voice came
nearer and paused beneath a fig tree, and the words grew distinct.

"Pieta, signore, di me dolente," it sang.

Silvia leaned out of the window and looked down at the singer. His
face was lifted to the white moonlight, and seemed in its pallid
beauty a concentration of the moonlight. Only his face was vi