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
between his feet and the ground and stars sparkling in his brain. He
felt as if his head were the sky.

This was an August night. One day in October, Matteo told his sister
that she was to go to Rome wi