s soon to go to the convent
of Santa Maria Maddalena on the Quirinal in Rome; and that, once entered
there, she would never again see a person from outside. The
town's-people were accustomed to the wall of silence and seclusion which
had already grown up about her, and they did not even seek to salute her
when they met her going to and from church in the morning. To these
simple citizens, ignorant but reverential, Sister Silvia's lowered
eyelids were as inviolate as the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.
Besides, to help their reverence, there were the fierce black eyes and
strange reputation of Matteo. So when, a day or two after her mother's
death, his sister begged him to accompany her to church in the early
morning, and leave her in the care of some decent woman there, Matteo
replied that she might go by herself.

She set out for the first time alone on what had ever been to her a _via
sacra_, and was now become a _via dolorosa_, where her tears dropped as
she walked. And going so once, she went again. Pepina, the elder sister,
a widow now, had come home to keep house for Matteo, but she was too
much taken up with work, the care of her two children and looking out
for a second husband to have time to watch Silvia, and after a few weeks
the young girl went as unheeded as a matron in her daily walk.

At home her life was nearly the same. She mended the clothes from the
washing and knit stockings, and sat at her window and looked off over
the Campagna toward Rome.

One evening she sat there before going to bed and watched the moonlight
turn all the earth to black and silver under the purple sky--a black
like velvet, so deep and soft was it, and a silver like white fire,
clear and splendid, yet beautifully soft. She was feeling desolate, and
her tears dropped down, now and then breaking into sobs. It had been
pleasant to sit there alone when she knew that her mother was below
stairs, strong, healthy and gay. All that life had been as the oil over
which her little flame burned. Lacking it, she grew dim, just as the
floating wick in her little blue vase before the Madonna grew dim when
the oil was gone.

As she wept and heard unconsciously the nightingales, she grew conscious
of another song that mingled with theirs. It was a human voice, clear
and sweet as an angel's, and it sang a melody she knew in little
snatches that seemed to begin and end in a sigh. The voice came nearer
and paused beneath a fig tree, and the wo