amily
name.

Roger and I puzzled out enough of it to gather vaguely what the
situation must have been, and when we read the second letter it was
all clear. This second letter was burned and blistered, too, but its
simple, naive repetitions, its tender terror, its brave, affectionate
persistence, left little, even in their fragmentary condition, for us
to guess. I will give only a page here and there.

"_I have tried for four months not to write, but what you told me last
has proved too strong for me and I must.... Oh, my dear one, my more
than sister in this world, how could you have been permitted this
deadly sin? It may be I shall be damned for even this one letter--my
only one, for you must not write again. Sister Lisabetta suspects me
already, and asked me last week why I should talk with the baker's
daughter so secretly? So if she brings another letter I shall tell her
to destroy it. Write to me no more._"

Ah, now we knew! Strange indeed was the blood that ran in Margarita's
blue-veined wrist! No light and fleeting passion had brought her into
this world.

".... _When I remember that it was I who brought you the first letter,
I weep for hours. God forgive me, and Our Lady, but I thought it was
only some idle nonsense of Sister Dolores--she was always so light,
Dolores! They have sent her back to Spain--I know you loved her best!
Sister Lisabetta found a bit of your gown caught on the cypress tree.
How dared you risk your life so? I swore I knew nothing, nor did I,
about what she asked me. The Archbishop came...._"

I think I see the little figure slipping from bough to bough under the
stars, the odour of all the vineyards is in my nostrils, the splashing
of the Convent fountain sounds in my ears!

".... _I could not sleep at night after that wicked letter of how you
love him--how dare you, a vowed nun, write such sinful words? It must
be, as they say, wrong to pray for you! Do not try to excuse yourself
because your brother devoted you against your will--you were happy
till he climbed the tree and saw you! Only Satan can make it so that
one wicked look between the eyes should make a man and woman mad
for--I will not remember that sinful letter, I will not! Maria, thou
art lost!_"

And so, even as she and Roger looked and could not look away and never
after lost each other's eyes, even so, her mother looked at her lover
and looking, lost (or so she thought) her soul! The wheel turns ever,
as Alif taught m