ould have been mine! She such a companion as
should have shared my life and borne me children of my own. And I would
burn with shame again in memory, as I had burnt in actual fact, to think
that she should have beheld me in so unkempt and bedraggled a condition.

How must I compare in her eyes with the gay courtiers who would daily
hover in her presence and hang upon her gentle speech? What thought of
me could I hope should ever abide with her, as the image of her abode
with me? Or, if she thought of me at all, she must think of me just as
a poor hermit, a man who had donned the anchorite's sackcloth and turned
his back upon a world that for him was empty.

It is very easy for you worldly ones who read, to conjecture what had
befallen me. I was enamoured. In a meeting of eyes had the thing come to
me. And you will say that it is little marvel, considering the seclusion
of all my life and particularly that of the past few months, that the
first sweet maid I beheld should have wrought such havoc, and conquered
my heart by the mere flicker of her lashes.

Yet so much I cannot grant your shrewdness.

That meeting was predestined. It was written that she should come and
tear the foolish bandage from my eyes, allowing me to see for myself
that, as Fra Gervasio had opined, my vocation was neither for hermitage
nor cloister; that what called me was the world; and that in the world
must I find salvation since I was needed for the world's work.

And none but she could have done that. Of this I am persuaded, as you
shall be when you have read on.

The yearnings with which she filled my soul were very different from
those inspired by the memory of Giuliana. That other sinful longing,
she entirely effaced at last, thereby achieving something that had been
impossible to prayers and fasting, to scourge and cilice. I longed for
her almost beatifically, as those whose natures are truly saintly long
for the presence of the blessed ones of Heaven. By the sight of her I
was purified and sanctified, washed clean of all that murk of sinful
desire in which I had lain despite myself; for my desire of her was the
blessed, noble desire to serve, to guard, to cherish.

Pure was she as the pale narcissus by the streams, and serving her what
could I be but pure?

And then, quite suddenly, upon the heels of such thoughts came the
reaction. Horror and revulsion were upon me. This was but a fresh
snare of Satan's baiting to lure me to destruct