turn to her own
kin.

As Odo sat in the quiet cell, listening to her story, and hearing again
the great names his youth had reverenced, he felt himself an exile
returning to his own, mounting the familiar heights and breathing the
air that was his birthright. Looking back from this recovered standpoint
he saw how far behind his early hopes had been left. Since his departure
from Naples there had been nothing to remind him of that vast noiseless
labour of the spirit going on everywhere beneath the social surface:
that baffled but undiscouraged endeavour in which he had once so
impatiently claimed his share. Now every word of Fulvia's smote the
bones of some dead purpose, till his bosom seemed a very valley of
Ezekiel. Her own trials had fanned her love of freedom, and the near
hope of release lent an exaltation to her words. Of bitterness, of
resentment she gave no sign; and he was awed by the same serenity of
spirit which had struck him in the imprisoned doctor. But perhaps the
strongest impression she produced was that of increasing his points of
contact with life. His other sentimental ties had been a barrier between
himself and the outer world; but the feeling which drew him to Fulvia
had the effect of levelling the bounds of egoism, of letting into the
circle of his nearest emotions that great tide of human longing and
effort that had always faintly sounded on the shores of self. Perhaps it
was her power of evoking this wider life that gave a sense of
permanence, of security almost, to the stolen moments of their
intercourse, lulling the lover's impatience of actual conditions with
the sense of something that must survive the accidents of fortune. Only
in some such way could he explain, in looking back, the completeness of
each moment spent with her. He was conscious even at the time of a
suspension of the emotional laws, a charmed surrender to the limitations
of his fate. When he was away his impatience reasserted itself; but her
presence was like a soothing hand on his spirit, and he knew that his
quiet hours with her would count among those intervals between the
crises of life that flower in memory when the crises themselves have
faded.

It was natural that in the course of these visits she in turn should
question him; and as his past rearranged itself beneath her scrutiny he
seemed once more to trace the thread of purpose on which its fragments
hung. He told her of his connection with the liberals of Pianura,