the Nile-boat, for a recent example. She had not a doubt
that her past life was the dream, or deception: and for the reason that
now she was compassionate, large of heart toward all beneath her. Let
them but leave her free, they were forgiven, even to prayers for their
well-being! The plural number in the case was an involuntary multiplying
of the single, coming of her incapacity during this elevation and rapture
of the senses to think distinctly of that One who had discoloured her
opening life. Freedom to breathe, gaze, climb, grow with the grasses, fly
with the clouds, to muse, to sing, to be an unclaimed self, dispersed
upon earth, air, sky, to find a keener transfigured self in that
radiation--she craved no more.

Bear in mind her beauty, her charm of tongue, her present state of white
simplicity in fervour: was there ever so perilous a woman for the most
guarded and clearest-eyed of young men to meet at early morn upon a
mountain side?

CHAPTER XVI

TREATS OF A MIDNIGHT BELL, AND OF A SCENE OF EARLY MORNING

On a round of the mountains rising from Osteno, South eastward of Lugano,
the Esquart party rose from the natural grotto and headed their carriages
up and down the defiles, halting for a night at Rovio, a little village
below the Generoso, lively with waterfalls and watercourses; and they
fell so in love with the place, that after roaming along the flowery
borderways by moonlight, they resolved to rest there two or three days
and try some easy ascents. In the diurnal course of nature, being
pleasantly tired, they had the avowed intention of sleeping there; so
they went early to their beds, and carelessly wished one another
good-night, none of them supposing slumber to be anywhere one of the
warlike arts, a paradoxical thing you must battle for and can only win at
last when utterly beaten. Hard by their inn, close enough for a priestly
homily to have been audible, stood a church campanile, wherein hung a
Bell, not ostensibly communicating with the demons of the pit; in
daylight rather a merry comrade. But at night, when the children of
nerves lay stretched, he threw off the mask. As soon as they had fairly
nestled, he smote their pillows a shattering blow, loud for the retold
preluding quarters, incredibly clanging the number ten. Then he waited
for neighbouring campanili to box the ears of slumber's votaries in turn;
whereupon, under pretence of excessive conscientiousness, or else
oblivious of his a