ignancy of that
moment is with me again--though very hateful now.

Thus I, blindly and recklessly, under the sway and thrall of that
terrific and overpowering temptation. And then there leapt in my mind a
glimmer of returning consciousness: a glimmer that grew rapidly to be
a blazing light in which I saw revealed the hideousness of the thing I
did. I tore myself away from her in that second of revulsion and hurled
her from me, fiercely and violently, so that, staggering to the seat
from which she had risen, she fell into it rather than sat down.

And whilst, breathless with parted lips and galloping bosom, she
observed me, something near akin to terror in her eyes, I stamped about
that room and raved and heaped abuse and recriminations upon myself,
ending by going down upon my knees to her, imploring her forgiveness for
the thing I had done--believing like a fatuous fool that it was all my
doing--and imploring her still more passionately to leave me and to go.

She set a trembling hand upon my head; she took my chin in the other,
and raised my face until she could look into it.

"If it be your will--if it will bring you peace and happiness, I will
leave you now and never see you more. But are you not deluded, my
Agostino?"

And then, as if her self-control gave way, she fell to weeping.

"And what of me if you go? What of me wedded to that monster, to that
cruel and inhuman pedant who tortures and insults me as you have seen?"

"Beloved, will another wrong cure the wrong of that?" I pleaded. "O, if
you love me, go--go, leave me. It is too late--too late!"

I drew away from her touch, and crossed the room to fling myself upon
the window-seat. For a space we sat apart thus, panting like wrestlers
who have flung away from each other. At length--"Listen, Giuliana," I
said more calmly. "Were I to heed you, were I to obey my own desires, I
should bid you come away with me from this to-morrow."

"If you but would!" she sighed. "You would be taking me out of hell."

"Into another worse," I countered swiftly. "I should do you such a wrong
as naught could ever right again."

She looked at me for a spell in silence. Her back was to the light and
her face in shadow, so that I could not read what passed there. Then,
very slowly, like one utterly weary, she got to her feet.

"I will do your will, beloved; but I do it not for the wrong that I
should suffer--for that I should count no wrong--but for the wrong that
I should