ordinary
lovers. We were not as man and maid who, meeting and being drawn each to
the other, fence and trifle in a pretty game of dalliance until the maid
opines that the appearances are safe, and that, her resistance having
been of a seemly length, she may now make the ardently desired surrender
with all war's honours. Nothing of that was in our wooing, a wooing
which seemed to us, now that we spoke of it, to have been done when we
had scarcely met, done in the vision that I had of her, and the vision
that she had of me.

With averted eyes she set me now a question.

"Madonna Giuliana used you with a certain freedom on her arrival, and
I have since heard your name coupled with her own by the Duke's ladies.
But I have asked no questions of them. I know how false can be the
tongues of courtly folk. I ask it now of you. What is or was this
Madonna Giuliana to you?"

"She was," I answered bitterly, "and God pity me that I must say it to
you--she was to me what Circe was to the followers of Ulysses."

She made a little moan, and I saw her clasp her hands in her lap; and
the sound and sight filled me with sorrow and despair. She must know.
Better that the knowledge should stand between us as a barrier which
both could see than that it should remain visible only to the eyes of my
own soul, to daunt me.

"O Bianca! Forgive me!" I cried. "I did not know! I did not know! I
was a poor fool reared in seclusion and ripened thus for the first
temptation that should touch me. That is what on Monte Orsaro I sought
to expiate, that I might be worthy of the shrine I guarded then. That
is what I would expiate now that I might be worthy of the shrine whose
guardian I would become, the shrine at which I worship now."

I was bending very low above her little brown head, in which the threads
of the gold coif-net gleamed in the fading light.

"If I had but had my vision sooner," I murmured, "how easy it would have
been! Can you find mercy for me in your gentle heart? Can you forgive
me, Bianca?

"O Agostino," she answered very sadly, and the sound of my name from her
lips, coming so naturally and easily, thrilled me like the sound of the
mystic music of Monte Orsaro. "What shall I answer you? I cannot now.
Give me leisure to think. My mind is all benumbed. You have hurt me so!"

"Me miserable!" I cried.

"I had believed you one who erred through excess of holiness."

"Whereas I am one who attempted holiness through excess of err