but by bridle-paths, through meadow-land and forest, up
hill and down, like a man entranced, not knowing whither I went nor
caring.

Besides, whither was I to go? Like my father before me I was an outcast,
a fugitive outlaw. But this troubled me not yet. My mind, my wounded,
tortured mind was all upon the past. It was of Giuliana that I thought
as I rode in the noontide warmth of that September day. And never can
human brain have held a sorer conflict of reflection than was mine.

No shadow now remained of the humour that had possessed me in the hour
in which I had repudiated her after the murder of Fifanti. I had heard
Fra Gervasio deliver judgment upon her, and I had doubted his justice,
felt that he used her mercilessly. My own sight had now confirmed to me
the truth of what he had said; but in doing so--in allowing me to
see her in another man's possession--a very rage of jealousy had been
stirred in me and a greater rage of longing.

This longing followed upon my first bitter denunciation of her; and it
followed soon. It is in our natures, as I then experienced, never more
to desire a thing than when we see it lost to us. Bitterly now did I
reproach myself for not having borne her off with me two nights ago when
I had fled Fifanti's house, when she herself had urged that course upon
me. I despised myself, out of my present want, for my repudiation of
her--a hundred times more bitterly than I had despised myself when I
imagined that I had done a vileness by that repudiation.

Never until now, did it seem to me, had I known how deeply I loved her,
how deeply the roots of our passion had burrowed down into my heart,
and fastened there to be eradicated only with life itself. So thought I
then; and thinking so I cried her name aloud, called to her through the
scented pine-woods, thus voicing my longing and my despair.

And swift on the heels of this would come another mood. There would come
the consciousness of the sin of it all, the imperative need to cleanse
myself of this, to efface her memory from my soul which could not hold
it without sinning anew in fierce desire. I strove to do so with all my
poor weak might. I denounced her to myself again for a soulless harlot;
blamed her for all the ill that had befallen me; accounted her the
very hand that had wielded me, a senseless instrument, to slay her
importunate husband.

And then I perceived that this was as pitiful a ruse of self-deception
as that of the fox