serable!"

"Giuliana!" I murmured soothingly, yet agonized myself.

"Could none have foretold me that you must come some day?"

"Hush!" I implored her. "What are you saying?"

But though I begged her to be silent, my soul was avid for more such
words from her--from her, the most perfect and beautiful of women.

"Why should I not?" said she. "Is truth ever to be stifled? Ever?"

I was mad, I know--quite mad. Her words had made me so. And when, to ask
me that insistent question, she brought her face still nearer, I flung
down the reins of my unreason and let it ride amain upon its desperate,
reckless course. In short, I too leaned forward, I leaned forward, and I
kissed her full upon those scarlet, parted lips.

I kissed her, and fell back with a cry that was of anguish almost--so
poignantly had the sweet, fierce pain of that kiss run through my every
fibre. And as I cried out, so too did she, stepping back, her hands
suddenly to her face. But the next moment she was peering up at the
windows of the house--those inscrutable eyes that looked upon our deed;
that looked and of which it was impossible to discern how much they
might have seen.

"If he should have seen us!" was her cry; and it moved me unpleasantly
that such should have been the first thought my kiss inspired in her.
"If he should have seen us! Gesu! I have enough to bear already!"

"I care not," said I. "Let him see. I am not Messer Gambara. No man
shall put an insult upon you on my account, and live."

I was become the very ranting, roaring, fire-breathing type of lover who
will slaughter a whole world to do pleasure to his mistress or to spare
her pain--I--I--I, Agostino d'Anguissola--who was to be ordained next
month and walk in the ways of St. Augustine!

Laugh as you read--for very pity, laugh!

"Nay, nay," she reassured herself. "He will be still abed. He was
snoring when I left." And she dismissed her fears, and looked at me
again, and returned to the matter of that kiss.

"What have you done to me, Agostino?"

I dropped my glance before her languid eyes. "What I have done to
no other woman yet," I answered, a certain gloom creeping over the
exultation that still thrilled me. "O Giuliana, what have you done to
me? You have bewitched me; You have made me mad!" And I set my elbows on
my knees and took my head in my hands, and sat there, overwhelmed now by
the full consciousness of the irrevocable thing that I had done, a thing
that must br