liana who gave me the information. With a courage that was
almost stupendous she looked down into his face, then up into mine,
which I doubt not was as livid.

"You have killed him," she whispered. "He is dead."

He was dead and I had killed him! My lips moved.

"He would have killed me," I answered in a strangled voice, and knew
that what I said was a sort of lie to cloak the foulness of my deed.

Old Busio uttered a long, croaking wail, and went down on his knees
beside the master he had served so long--the master who would never more
need servant in this world.

It was upon the wings of that pitiful cry that the full understanding
of the thing I had done was borne in upon my soul. I bowed my head, and
took my face in my hands. I saw myself in that moment for what I was. I
accounted myself wholly and irrevocably damned, Be God never so clement,
surely here was something for which even His illimitable clemency could
find no pardon.

I had come to Fifanti's house as a student of humanities and divinities;
all that I had learnt there had been devilries culminating in this
hour's work. And all through no fault of that poor, mean, ugly pedant,
who indeed had been my victim--whom I had robbed of honour and of life.

Never man felt self-horror as I felt it then, self-loathing and
self-contempt. And then, whilst the burden of it all, the horror of
it all was full upon me, a soft hand touched my shoulder, and a soft,
quivering voice murmured urgently in my ear:

"Agostino, we must go; we must go."

I plucked away my hands, and showed her a countenance before which she
shrank in fear.

"We?" I snarled at her. "We?" I repeated still more fiercely, and drove
her back before me as if I had done her a bodily hurt.

O, I should have imagined--had I had time in which to imagine
anything--that already I had descended to the very bottom of the pit of
infamy. But it seems that one more downward step remained me; and that
step I took. Not by act, nor yet by speech, but just by thought.

For without the manliness to take the whole blame of this great crime
upon myself, I must in my soul and mind fling the burden of it upon her.
Like Adam of old, I blamed the woman, and charged her in my thoughts
with having tempted me. Charging her thus, I loathed her as the cause of
all this sin that had engulfed me; loathed her in that moment as a thing
unclean and hideous; loathed her with a completeness of loathing such as
I had never ex