im?"

I turned feebly to Bianca; but Bianca had not spoken. She leaned,
dumb with fright, against the wall of the alleyway, and stared at the
Princess, who faced us, panting, in the whirls of snow.

"I tried"--it was my own voice saying this--"yes, indeed, I tried to
save him. He would not, and they killed him . . . and now they also
are killed."

"Yes--yes, I heard them." She peered close. "Can you walk? Try to
think it is a little way; for it is most necessary you should walk."

I had not the smallest notion whether I could walk or not.
It appeared more important that my head was being eaten with red-hot
teeth. But she took my arm and led me.

"Go before us, foolish girl, and make less noise," she commanded the
sobbing Bianca.

"But you must try for _my_ sake," she whispered, "to think it but a
little way."

And I must have done so with success; for of the way through the
streets I remember nothing but the end--a light shining down the
passage of Messer' Fazio's house, a mandolin still tinkling over the
archway behind us, and a door opening upon a company seated at table,
the faces of all--and of Mr. Fett especially--very distinct under the
lamp-light. They rose--it seemed, all at once--to welcome us, and
their faces wavered as they rose.

CHAPTER XXX.

THE SUMMIT AND THE STARS.

"Aucassins, biax amis doux
En quel terre en irons nous?
--Douce amie, que sai jou?
Moi ne caut u nous aillons,
En forest u en destor,
Mais que je soie aveuc vous!"
_Aucassin and Nicolete.

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."
_Dante_.

I awoke to a hum of voices . . . but when my eyes opened, the
speakers were gone, and I lay staring at an open window beyond which
the sky shone, blue and deep as a well. On a chair beside the window
sat the Princess, her hands in her lap. . . . While I stared at her,
two strange fancies played together in my mind like couples crossing
in a dance; the first, that she sat there waiting for something to
happen, and had been waiting for a very long, an endless, while; the
other that her body had grown transparent. The sunlight seemed to
float through it as through a curtain.

I dare say that I lay incapable of movement; but this did not
distress me at all, for I felt no desire to stir--only a contentment,
deep as the sky outside, to rest there and let my eyes rest on h