e side of
Venice!

He was sure that it was a matter of conscience and not of contest with
Marina, therefore she _must_ know; he should have realized that! How had
Fra Francesco met her questions? Had he told her it was a matter beyond
the comprehension of women? Or had he been patient with her difficulties
and solved them with terrible positiveness? Was it he who had brought
her these manuals on "Fasts and Penances," "The Use and Nature of the
Interdict," "The Duty of the Believer," which completed for her the
pictures of horror her faith had already outlined? Marcantonio had taken
in all their dread meaning in rapid glances. How could she believe those
terrible things he had seen in her eyes--those terrible, terrible
things!

Nay, how should she not believe them? And how implicitly she must have
believed them to have endured so much in hope of averting this doom!

"Marina! Carina!" his heart went out to her in a great wail of pity; a
woman--so tender, so young--kneeling at night in her chapel, alone with
the vision of the horror she was praying to avert; bearing the fasting
and the penance and the weakness, all alone, in the hope that God would
be merciful; gathering up her failing strength so bravely for that
thankless scene in the Senate. And he, her husband, who had never meant
that his love should fail her, could have spared her all this pain by a
little comprehension! Could she ever forgive him? And would she
understand some day? Might he reason it all out lovingly with her when
her strength came back to her--"For baby's sake!" that sweet, womanly,
natural plea which he had disregarded?

"Signor Santorio," he moaned, "if I might but reason with her, I might
cure her!"

"Nay," said Santorio, "not yet; the shadow hath not left her eyes. Let
her forget."

She had been growing stronger, they said, doing quite passively the
things they asked of her toward her restoration; she recognized them
all, but she expressed neither wish nor emotion, lying chiefly with
closed eyes in the cavernous depths of the great invalid chair where
they laid her each day, yet responding by some movement if they called
her name--rarely with any words; nothing roused her from that mood of
unbroken brooding.

"She will not forget," the great Santorio said in despair. "We must try
to rouse her. Let her child be brought."

The ghost of a smile flitted for an instant about her pale lips and over
the shadowy horror in her eyes, as Marcan