Maria did not send for Castiglione the next day, nor during a number of days afterwards, and Giuliana Parenzo saw that she was very much preoccupied and was not looking well. The elder woman was far too good a friend to ask questions, and when the two were together she did her best to amuse Maria by her talk. The Marchesa was not particularly witty, but she sometimes told a story with little touches of humour that were quite her own. Very good women are rarely witty, but they often have a happy faculty of seeing the funny side of things. Wit wounds, but humour disarms.

Giuliana saw, too, that Maria did not like to be alone, even with Leone. The truth was that she slept little and was very nervous. Something had come back from the past to haunt her; often a nameless horror came near her, not at night only, for it was not the fear of an overwrought imagination, but in broad daylight too, when she was alone and chanced to be doing nothing. It was the more dreadful because she could not define it; she could not say that it was caused by the question Castiglione had asked her, and which she had promised to answer, but when she thought of that her mind refused to be reasonable, and the horror came upon her, and she felt that utter ruin was close at hand, lying in wait for her. She remembered the sensation well in the old days; she had sometimes fancied then that she was going mad, and had made great efforts to control herself, but she had never thought of asking a doctor what it was, for she had believed, and believed now, that it was a state of mind rather than the mere effect of anxiety and mental fatigue on her body. So she suffered much, and quite uselessly; but that was a small matter compared with the fact that she had promised Castiglione an answer before his fortnight’s leave was over, and that after several days she was no nearer to finding one than when he had left her.

Again and again she thought of telling Giuliana all her trouble and asking her advice, but she was always deterred by an inward conviction that her friend would not understand. She was mistaken in this, but she could not believe that she was. Giuliana knew something, of course; all Rome believed Teresa Crescenzi’s story, of which the starting-point was that she had loved Baldassare del Castiglione innocently, and it was Giuliana who had repeated the tale to her. Maria had shaken her head, and had answered that there was not much truth in it, but that people might as well believe it as invent any other story, since she would never tell any one, not even Giuliana, exactly what had happened.

‘It does not concern me only,’ she had said gravely.

Giuliana had asked no questions, and Maria had been sure that there would never be any need of referring to her secret again.

But now the past had come back to ask a question which she could not answer. She had been in earnest when she had told Baldassare proudly that she did not mean to go to a priest for advice. He disliked all priests out of prejudice, as she knew. There might be good and bad soldiers, lawyers, writers, artists, or workmen, but in his estimation there could be very few good priests. Yet it was not to please him that she had said she would not go to her confessor; it was simply because she was quite sure that she could trust her own conscience and her own sense of honour to show her the right way; and perhaps she might have trusted both if her nerves had not failed her at the critical moment and left her apparently helpless. She was in great need of help and advice, and did not know where to go for either.

Meanwhile she had not met Castiglione again. The season was over, and even at its height she did not go out much. Society is always dull when one has no object in joining in its inane revels—love, ambition, stupid vanity, or a daughter to marry—unless, indeed, one possesses the temperament of a butterfly combined with the intelligence of an oyster. So it had been quite natural that Maria should not have met Castiglione during those days, and she had not chanced to meet him in the street. On his side, he had kept away from the part of the city in which she lived, but he had gone to every friend’s house and public place where he thought there was a possibility of meeting her.

After a week they met by what seemed an accident to them both. Maria was almost ill, and could no longer bear her trouble without some help. There was in Rome a good priest of her own class—a man in ten thousand, a man of heart, a man of courage, a man of the highest honour and of the purest life. If she had not always disliked the idea of meeting her confessor in the world, she would have chosen this man for hers long ago. If he had been in Rome in the darkest months of her life she would certainly have gone to him for advice; but he had then been working as a parish priest in a remote and fever-stricken part of the Maremma, and it was because his health had broken down that he had been obliged to give up his labours and come back to Rome. He was now a Canon of Saint Peter’s, and was employed as Secretary to the Cardinal Vicar, but found time to occupy himself with matters nearer to his heart. His name was Monsignor Ippolito Saracinesca; he was the second son of Don Giovanni, the head of the great family, and he was about forty years old.

To him Maria Montalto determined to go in her extremity. She was not quite sure how she should tell him her story, but for the sake of what she had said to Castiglione she would not put it in the form of a confession. She would not need to tell so much of it but that she could lay it before him as an imaginary case—which is a foolish device when it is meant to hide a secret, but is useful as a means of communicating one that is hard to tell.

Monsignor Saracinesca was generally at Saint Peter’s at about eleven o’clock, and Maria made sure of finding him there by telephoning to the Saracinesca palace, in which he had a small apartment of his own. At half-past ten she left her house alone, took a cab and drove across Rome to the Basilica. She got out at the front and went up the steps, for she had never before been to see any one in the Sacristy, and was not quite sure of what would happen if she went directly to it at the back of the church.

She entered on the right-hand side, by force of habit. There is a very heavy wadded leathern curtain there, and she had to pull it aside for herself, which was not easy. Just as she was doing this, and using all her strength, some one pushed the curtain up easily from within, and she found herself face to face with Baldassare del Castiglione, and very near him. She started violently, for she was even more nervous than usual. He himself was so much surprised that he drew his head back quickly; then he bent it silently and stood aside, holding up the curtain for her to pass, as if not expecting that she would stop to speak to him.

‘Thank you,’ she said, going in.

She tried to smile a little, just as much as one might with a word of thanks; but the effort was so great, and her face was so pale and disturbed, that it made a painful impression on him, and he watched her anxiously till she had gone a few steps forward into the church, for he was really afraid that she might faint and fall, and perhaps hurt herself, and there was no one near the door just then to help her.

But she walked straight enough, and he had just begun to lower the heavy curtain, turning his head as he passed under it, when he heard her call him sharply.

‘Balduccio!’

It was very long since she had called him familiarly by his first name, and his heart stood still at the sound of her voice. A moment later he was within the church, and met her as she was coming back to the door.

‘You called me?’

‘Yes.’

They turned to the right into the north aisle, and walked slowly forwards, side by side. There were not many people in the Basilica at that hour, for it was a week-day, and the season of the tourists was almost over. At some distance before them, two or three people were kneeling before the closed gate of the Julian Chapel. Maria and Castiglione were as much alone as if they had been in the country, and as free to talk, for no conversation, even in an ordinary tone, can be heard far in the great cathedral. Nevertheless Maria did not speak.

‘You are ill,’ Castiglione said, breaking the silence at last. ‘Let me take you to your carriage.’

‘No. I came here for a good purpose, and I cannot go home without doing what I mean to do.’

‘I wish with all my heart that I had not come back to Rome to disturb your peace! It is my fault that you are suffering.’

‘No. It is not your fault.’ She spoke gently. ‘It is a consequence, that’s all. You had a right to ask me that question, and you have a right to an answer. But I cannot find one. That is what is troubling me.’

‘You are kind to me,’ said Castiglione. ‘Too kind,’ he added, and she knew by his tone how much he was moved.

She turned in her walk before she answered, for they were already near the Julian Chapel.

‘No,’ she said after a minute, and she bent her head. ‘Not too kind—if you knew all.’

He looked quickly at her face, but she did not turn to him. His heart beat hard and his throat felt suddenly dry.

‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ she said, still looking steadily down at the pavement. ‘I meant, if you knew how much I wish to be just—to myself as well as to you, Balduccio.’

‘I do not want justice,’ he answered sadly. ‘I ask for forgiveness.’

‘Yes. I know.’

She said no more, and they walked slowly on. At the little gate of Leo the Twelfth’s Chapel she stopped, and she took hold of the bars with both hands and looked in, leaving room for him to stand beside her.

‘Justice,’ she cried in a low voice, ‘justice, justice! To you, to me, to my husband! God help us all three!’

He did not understand, but he felt that a change had come over her since he had seen her a week earlier, and that it was in his favour rather than against him.

‘Justice!’ he repeated after her, but in a very different tone. ‘It would have been justice if I had put a bullet through my head when I went home that night!’

Maria’s hands left the bars of the gate and grasped Castiglione’s arm above the elbow and shook it a little.

‘Never say that again!’ she cried in a stifled voice. ‘Promise me that you will never think it again! Promise!’

He was amazed at her energy and earnestness, and he understood less and less what was passing in her heart.

‘I can only promise you that I will never do it,’ he answered gravely.

‘Yes,’ she cried in the same tone, ‘promise me that! It is what I mean. Give me your sacred word of honour! Take oath to me before the Cross—there—do you see?’ she pointed with one hand through the bars to the Crucifix in the stained window, still holding him with the other. ‘Swear solemnly that you will never kill yourself, whatever happens!’

He could well have asked if she loved him still, and she could not have denied it then; but he would not, for he was in earnest too. He had not meant to trouble her life so deeply when he had come to ask her forgiveness; far less had he dreamt that the old love had survived all. A great wave of pure devotion to the woman he had wronged swept him to her feet.

It was long since he had knelt in any church; but now he was kneeling beside her as she stood, and he was looking up to the sacred figure, and his hands were joined together.

‘You have my word and promise,’ he said in deep emotion. ‘Let the God you trust be witness between you and me.’

He heard a soft sound, and she was kneeling beside him, close to the bars. Then her ungloved hand, cold and trembling, went out and rested lightly on his own for a moment.

‘Is it forgiveness?’ he asked, very low.

‘It is forgiveness,’ she said.

He pressed his forehead against his folded hands that rested upon the bars. Then he understood that she was praying, and he rose very quietly and drew back a step, as from something he held in great reverence, but in which he had no part.

She did not heed him and remained kneeling a little while, a slight and rarely graceful figure in dark grey against the rich shadows within the chapel. If any one passed near, neither he nor she was aware of it, and there was nothing in the attitude of either to excite surprise in such a place, except that it is unusual to see any one praying just there.

Maria rose at last, stood a few seconds longer before the gate, and then turned to Baldassare. Her face had changed since he had last seen it clearly; it was still pale and full of suffering, but there was light in it now. She stood beside him and looked at him quietly when she spoke.

‘I have not given you all my answer yet,’ she said. ‘I will tell you why I came here, because I wish to be quite frank in all there is to be between us. I told you the other day that I would not go to my confessor for advice. At least, that is what I meant to say. Did I?’

‘Yes. That was what you said.’

‘I shall keep my word. But I am going for help to a friend who is a priest, because I have broken down. I thought I could trust my own conscience and my own sense of honour; I thought I could fancy my boy a man, and in imagination ask him what his mother should do. But I cannot. I am very tired, and my thoughts are all confused and blurred. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ said Castiglione; but in spite of himself his face betrayed his displeasure at the thought that an ecclesiastic should come between them.

‘I am going to see a priest whom I trust as a man,’ she went on. ‘I am going to Monsignor Saracinesca.’

‘Don Ippolito?’ Castiglione’s brow cleared, and he almost smiled.

‘Yes. Do you know him?’

‘I know him well. You could not go to a better man.’

‘I am glad to hear you say that. I may not follow his advice, after all, but I am sure he will help me to find myself again.’

‘Perhaps.’ Castiglione spoke thoughtfully, not doubtfully. Then his face hardened, but not unkindly, and the manly features set themselves in a look of brave resolution. ‘Before you go let me say something,’ he went on, after the short pause. ‘You have given me more to-day than I ever hoped to have from you, Maria. I will ask nothing else, since the mere thought of seeing me often has troubled you so much. I will leave Rome to-day, and I will not come back—never, unless you send for me. Put all the rest out of your mind and be yourself again, and remember only that you have forgiven me the worst deed of my life. I can live on that till the end. Good-bye. God bless you!’

She had been looking down, but now she raised her eyes to his, and there were tears in them that did not overflow. He held out his hand, but she would not take it.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are brave and kind, but I will not have it so. I may ask you to go away when your leave is over, but not to stay always, and after a time we shall meet again. Before going you must come and see me. I will write you a line to-night or to-morrow. Good-bye now, but only for to-day.’

She smiled faintly, bent her head a little, and turned from him to cross the nave on her way to the Sacristy. He stood by the pillar and watched her, sure that she would not look back. She moved lightly, but not fast, over the vast pavement. When she was opposite the Julian Chapel, which is the Chapel of the Sacrament, she turned towards it and bent her knee, but she rose again instantly and went on till she disappeared behind the great pilaster of the dome, at the corner of the south transept.

Then Castiglione went slowly and thoughtfully away, happier than he had been for a long time.

But Maria went on, and glanced at her watch, and hastened her steps. She left the church and traversed the long marble corridors, where all kinds of people come and go on all sorts of business whenever the Basilica is open. In the great central hall of the Sacristy, which is as big as an ordinary church, she asked the first acolyte she met for Monsignor Saracinesca.

He was close at hand, in the Chapter-House. ‘Would the lady give her revered name?’ ‘The Countess of Montalto.’ The young man in the violet cassock bowed low. ‘Monsignor Saracinesca would certainly see her Excellency.’ ‘Her Excellency’ thanked the young man and stood aside to wait, out of the way of the many canons and other ecclesiastics, and choirmen, and singing boys, and other acolytes who were all moving hither and thither as if they were very busy about doing nothing in a hurry. In less than half a minute Ippolito Saracinesca joined her.

The churchman was a man of forty or near that, but was already very grey, and thin almost to emaciation. He had the wan complexion of those who have lived long in feverish parts of Italy, and there were many lines of suffering in his refined features, which seemed to be modelled in wax. In his youth he had been said to be like his mother’s mother, and a resemblance to her portrait was still traceable, especially in his clear brown eyes. The chief characteristics of the man’s physical nature were an unconquerable and devoted energy that could defy sickness and pain, and a very markedly ascetic temperament. Spiritually, what was strongest in him was a charity that was active, unselfish, wise and just, and that was, above all, of that sort which inspires hope in those whom it helps, and helps all whom it finds in need.

It was said in the precincts of the Vatican that Monsignor Saracinesca was likely to be made a cardinal at an early age. But the poor people in the Maremma said he was a saint who would not long be allowed to suffer earthly ills, and whose soul was probably already in paradise while his body was left to do good in this world till it should wear itself out and melt away like a shadow.

Ippolito Saracinesca had known only one great temptation in his life. Unlike most people who accomplish much in this world, he was a good musician, and was often tempted to bestow upon a perfectly selfish pleasure some of that precious time which he truly believed had been given him only that he might use it for others. More than once he had bound himself not to touch an instrument nor go to a concert for a whole month, because he felt that the gift was absorbing him too much.

This was the friend to whom Maria Montalto had come for advice and help, and of whom Castiglione had said that she could not have chosen a better man.

‘There is no one in the Chapter-House,’ he said, after the first friendly greeting. ‘Will you come in and sit down? I was trying to decide about the placing of another picture which we have discovered amongst our possessions.’

He led the way and Maria followed, and sat down beside the table on one of the big chairs which were symmetrically ranged against the walls.

‘Please tell me how I can serve you,’ said Don Ippolito.

‘It is not easy to tell you,’ Maria answered. ‘I am in great perplexity and I need advice—the advice of a good man—of a friend—of some one who knows the world.’

‘Yes,’ said Monsignor Saracinesca, folding his transparent hands and looking at one of Melozzo da ForlÌ’s inspired angels on the opposite wall. ‘So far as you care to trust me as a friend and one who knows something of the world, I will do my best. But let us understand each other before you say anything more. This is not in any way a confession, I suppose. You wish to ask my advice in confidence. Is that it?’

‘Yes, yes! That is what it is!’

‘And you come to me as to a friend, rather than as to a priest?’

‘Oh, yes! Much more.’

‘And you trust me, merely as you would trust a friend, and without the intention of putting me under a sacred obligation of silence, by which the life and welfare of any one might hereafter be endangered. Is that what you mean?’

‘Yes, distinctly. But that will never happen. I mean that no one’s life could ever be in danger by your not telling. At least, I cannot see how.’

‘Strange things happen,’ said Don Ippolito, still looking at the angel. ‘And now that we understand each other about that, I am ready. What is the difficulty?’

Maria rested her elbow on the corner of the big table and shaded her eyes with her hand for a moment. It was not easy to tell such a story as hers.

‘Do you know anything about my past life?’ she began timidly, and glancing sideways at him.

He turned his brown eyes full to hers.

‘Yes,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘I do know something, and more than a little.’

She was surprised, and looked at him with an expression of inquiry.

‘I have always known your husband very well,’ he said. ‘He wrote to me for advice when there was trouble between you. I was in the Maremma then.’

‘And it was you who advised him to leave me! Ah, I did not know!’

Maria drew back a little proudly, expecting him to admit the imputation.

‘No,’ answered Don Ippolito. ‘I did not, but he thought it wiser not to take the advice I gave him.’

Maria’s expression changed again.

‘Do you know who was—who—was the cause of his going away?’

‘Yes. I am afraid every one knows that. It was Baldassare del Castiglione, and he is in Rome again.’

‘Yes,’ Maria replied, repeating his words, ‘he is in Rome again.’

He thought he had made it easy for her to say more, if she wished to tell all, but she was silent. He had heard Montalto’s story from beginning to end, and upon that he judged her, of course, as she had allowed herself to be judged by her husband, without the least suggestion of defence. After all, how could either of the two men judge her otherwise? How could she tell now what she had once called the truth? How near the truth was it? She would put her question as best she could.

‘My excuse is that we loved each other very, very much,’ she said in a low and timid voice. ‘It was long before I married,’ she added, a little more firmly, for she was not ashamed of that. ‘But we parted’—her voice sank to a whisper—‘we parted when it was too late. And we have never met, nor ever written one word to each other since.’

As she pronounced the last sentence she raised her head again, for she knew what that separation had cost, in spite of all—in spite of what she had called the truth.

‘That was right,’ Don Ippolito said. ‘That was your duty; but it was brave of you both to do it.’ She felt encouraged.

‘And now he is in Rome again,’ she went on. ‘He has come on leave for a few days. He came on purpose to ask my forgiveness, after all these years, because there was something to forgive—at least—he thought there was——’

She broke off, quite unable to go on.

‘You were very young,’ suggested Don Ippolito, helping her. ‘You had no experience of the world. Such a man would have a very great advantage over a very young woman who had been attached to him when a girl and was unhappily married.’

But Maria had clasped her hands desperately tight together before her on the edge of the table, and she bent down now and pressed her forehead upon them. She spoke in broken words.

‘No, no! I know it now! It was not—not what I thought—oh, I can’t tell you! I can’t, I can’t!’

She was breaking down, for she was worn-out and fearfully overwrought. Then Monsignor Saracinesca spoke quietly, but in a tone of absolute authority.

‘Tell me nothing more,’ he said. ‘This is not a confession, and I cannot allow you to go on. Try to get control of yourself so that you may go home quietly.’

He rose as he spoke, but she stretched her hand out across the table to stop him.

‘No—please don’t go away! I have said I forgive him—if there is anything to forgive—may I say that he is to come back? May I see him sometimes? We are so sure of ourselves, he and I, after all these years——’

Monsignor Saracinesca’s brows bent with a little severity.

‘Montalto is living,’ he said, ‘and he is a broken-hearted man. Since you and he parted you have borne his name as honourably as you could, you have done what was in your power to atone for your fault by not seeing your lover. I am frank, you see. Montalto knows how you have lived and is not unjust nor ungrateful. But for his mother, I think a reconciliation would be possible.’

Maria started at the words, and turned even paler than before.

‘A reconciliation!’ she cried in a low and frightened voice.

‘Yes,’ answered Don Ippolito, who had resumed his seat. ‘He loves you still. It is my firm belief that he has never bestowed a thought on any other woman since he first wished to marry you. I know beyond all doubt that since he left you he has led a life such as few men of the world ever lead. No doubt he has his defects, as a man of the world. I daresay he is not one of those men with whom it is easy to live, and he is a melancholy and depressing person. But so far as the rest is concerned——’

He stopped, feeling that he was perhaps defending his friend too warmly. Maria had bent her head again, and sat with her hands lying dejectedly on her knees.

‘You know more,’ she said sadly. ‘He has written you that he is coming back!’

‘No. I only think it possible. But if he did, could you refuse to live under his roof? Has he wronged you?’

‘He meant to be just! But if he should come back—oh, no, no, no! For God’s sake, not that!’

She bent her head lower still, and spoke scarcely above a whisper.

‘Remember that he has the right, that it lies with him to forgive, not with you. If he should do that, and should come, would you not be glad to feel that after all you had done your best? That so far as you could help it you had not seen your lover, nor encouraged him, nor given him the slightest cause to think you would? You could at least receive your husband’s forgiveness with a clear conscience. At least you could say that you had not failed again!’

Don Ippolito waited a moment, but Maria could not speak, or had no answer ready for him. He went on, quietly and kindly.

‘But if you allow Castiglione to come back and live here, and to see you, even rarely, it will all be different. Think only of what the world will say; and what the world says will be repeated to your husband. You have broken his heart, and all but ruined his life; remember that he loves you as much as your lover ever did; think what he has felt, what he has suffered! And then consider, too, that if anything has softened the bitterness of his pain, it has been the faultless life you have led since. Before God it is enough to do right, but before the world it is not. Men do not accept the truth unless it is outwardly proved to them. That is a part of the social contract by which our outward lives are bound. Allow Castiglione to come to Rome, to be seen with you and at your house, even now and then, and the world will have no mercy. It will say that you are tired of your loneliness, and have taken him back to be to you what he was. Then people will laugh at Teresa Crescenzi’s clever story instead of believing it. You came to me as to a friend, and as what you call a man of the world, and I give you what I think will be the world’s view. Am I right, or not?’

There was a long pause. Then Maria tried to meet the good man’s earnest eyes, but her own wandered to one of the angels on the wall.

‘You are right,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Yes, you are right. I see it now.’

Her gaze was fixed upon the lovely frescoed head, with its glory of golden hair and its look of heavenly innocence. But she did not see it; she was thinking that if she did right she must tell Castiglione never to come back, and that the aching, lonely life that had seemed once more so full for a brief space was to begin again to-morrow, and was to last until she died. And she was thinking that her husband might come back.

Monsignor Saracinesca waited quietly after she had spoken, for since she admitted the truth of what he urged he felt that there was nothing more to say. After a little while Maria collected her strength for the effort and rose from her seat, still resting one hand on the great table.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You have been very kind. All you have told me is true. I shall try to follow your advice.’

‘I hope you will,’ answered the Churchman. ‘You will not find it so hard as you think.’

She smiled faintly, as gentle people do sometimes when they are in great pain and well-disposed persons tell them that suffering is all a matter of imagination.

‘Oh, no!’ she answered. ‘I shall find it very, very hard.’

The grey-haired man sighed and smiled at her so sadly and kindly that she felt herself drawn to him even more than before. She was standing close to him now, and looked up trustfully to his spiritual face and deeply thoughtful eyes.

‘I did not know I loved him so much till he came back,’ she said simply. ‘How could I? I did not guess that I had forgiven him long ago!’

‘Poor child! God help you!’

‘I need help.’ She was silent for a moment, and then looked down. ‘Do you write to my husband?’ she asked timidly.

‘Sometimes. I have little time for writing letters. Should you like to send him any message?’

‘Oh, no!’ she cried in a startled tone. ‘But oh, if you write to him, don’t urge him to come back! Don’t make him think it is his duty. It cannot be his duty to make any one so unhappy as I should be!’

‘I shall not give him any advice whatever unless he asks for it,’ replied Don Ippolito, ‘and if he does, I shall answer that I think he should write to you directly, for I would rather not try to act as his adviser. I told you that he did not take my advice the first time.’

‘Yes—but—you have been so kind! Would you tell me what you wished him to do then?’

The priest thought a moment.

‘I cannot tell you that,’ he said presently.

Maria looked surprised, and shrank back a little, suspecting that he had suggested some course which might have offended or hurt her. He understood intuitively.

‘It would be a betrayal of confidence to Montalto,’ he added, ‘to tell you what I advised him, and what he did not do. But I still think it would have been better for both of you if he had done it.’

Maria looked puzzled.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, in a tone from which there was no appeal, ‘but I cannot tell you.’

She looked at him a little hardly at first; then she remembered what every one in Rome knew, that the delicate, shadow-like man with the clear brown eyes had risked being tried for murder when he was a young priest rather than betray a confession which had been anything but formal. Her tired face softened as she thought of that.

‘I am sorry I asked you,’ she said. ‘I did not mean to be inquisitive.’

‘It was natural that you should ask the question,’ he answered, ‘but it would not have been quite honourable in me to answer it.’

‘I trust you all the more because you refused me,’ she said. ‘And now I must be going, for I have kept you a long time.’

‘Scarcely a quarter of an hour.’ He smiled as he glanced at the hideous modern clock on the table.

She left him after thanking him and pressing his thin, kindly hand, and she made her way back to the church, feeling a little faint.

When she was gone Monsignor Saracinesca returned to the question of the picture which was to be hung, but for a while he could not give it all the attention that a beautiful Hans Memling deserved. He was thinking of what he had said to Maria, and not only of that, but of what he had said to Baldassare del Castiglione a quarter of an hour earlier.

For that was the coincidence which had brought the two together that morning at the door of the church. Castiglione had taken it into his head to see Don Ippolito on the same day; like Maria, he had telephoned to the palace and had learned that his old acquaintance was usually to be found in the Sacristy about eleven; being a soldier, he had gone punctually at the hour, whereas Maria had not arrived till fifteen or twenty minutes later, and it was therefore almost a certainty that they should meet.

It had not been easy for Don Ippolito, taken by surprise as he was. But Castiglione had put his case as one man of honour may to another, and had told as much of the truth as he might without casting the least slur on Maria’s good name. He had loved her before her marriage, he had said; he loved her still. After she had been married he had left her no peace, and Montalto had made him the reason for leaving her. She had bidden him, Castiglione, to go away and never see her again. He had so far obeyed as to stay away several years. He had come back at last to ask her forgiveness; he was not sure of obtaining it—he had not yet met her in the church—but he came to Don Ippolito as a friend. His love for Maria was great, he said, but even if she forgave him, he would never see her again rather than be the cause of any further trouble or anxiety to her. What did Don Ippolito think? Don Ippolito considered the matter for a few minutes, and then said that in his opinion any renewal of friendly intercourse between Castiglione and the Countess would surely bring trouble and would inevitably cause her anxiety. If Castiglione loved her in the way he believed he did, he would think more of her welfare than of the pleasure he would have in seeing her. If he was sure that his thoughts of her were what he represented them to be, he could write to her, and she might write to him if she thought fit. The prelate refused to say more than that, but the opinion was delivered in such manly and direct words that Castiglione was much impressed by it; and when, in the church, he had generously offered to leave Rome at once, because he saw in Maria’s face all the trouble and anxiety he feared for her, he had spoken with Ippolito Saracinesca’s honourable words still ringing in his ears. It was no wonder if he told Maria that she could not have chosen a better man of whom to ask help and advice; and though he knew what that advice would be, and felt sorrowfully sure that she would try to follow it, he almost smiled at the coincidence as he watched her cross the nave in the direction of the Sacristy.

And now, when she came back into the Basilica, she retraced her steps towards the tomb of Leo Twelfth. Again she stopped a moment and almost knelt as she passed before the Julian Chapel and went on to the north aisle; but when the small gate before which she had knelt with Castiglione was in sight she paused in the shadow of the pillar and leant against the marble, as if she were very tired.

Till then she had not dared to ask herself what she meant to do, but when she saw the place where she had so lately touched Castiglione’s hand in forgiveness of the past, the truth rushed back upon her, as the winter’s tide turns from the ebb to storm upon the beaten shore.

It was upon her, and she felt that it would sweep her from her feet and drown her; and it was not the imaged truth she had taught herself to believe those many years. She gazed at the closed gate, and she knew why she had forgiven her lover at last. It was because she wished to forgive herself, and she had found it easy, shamefully easy. The hour of evil came back to her memory with frightful vividness, and now her pale cheek burned with shame and she pressed it hard against the icy marble; and she forced her eyes to stay wide open, lest if she shut them for an instant, she should see what she remembered so horribly well.

She would not go to the gate again, now; the words she had said there had been false and untrue, the prayer she had breathed there had been a blasphemy and nothing else. For years and years she had lived in the mortal sin of those brief moments; unconfessing and unpardoned of God, she had gone to Communion month after month, telling herself that she was an innocent, suffering woman, doing her best to atone for another’s crime; yet she had always felt in the dark hiding-places of her heart the knowledge that it was all untrue, that she had been less sinned against than herself sinning, and that if she would die in the faith in which she had been brought up, and in the hope of life hereafter, she must some day humble herself and her pride to the earth, and ask of God and man the pardon she had granted just now as if it were hers to give.

It was too much; it was more than she could bear. In her anger and hatred of herself she found strength to turn from the pillar and to go on straight and quickly to the door. Two or three soldiers who had wandered in were just leaving the Basilica; they lifted the heavy curtain for her and she thanked them mechanically and passed out, holding her head high.