nds in a moment:

"Is it possible that what I hear is true? I will not believe it: I will
not let you go."

"Yes, and I must go," she wrote back. "I have to start at seven in the
morning. Dear Claudio, be resigned: there is no help for it."

"Silvia, why will you persist in ruining your life and mine? It is a
sin. Say that you are too sick to go to-morrow. Stay in bed all day, and
by night I will have a rope-ladder for you to come down to me. We can
run away and hide somewhere."

"I cannot. We could never hide from Matteo: he would find us out and
kill us both."

"I will go to the Holy Father and tell him all. We could be in Rome
early in the morning if we should walk all night."

"Matteo would hear us: he hears everything. We should never reach Rome.
He would find us wherever we might be hidden. If we were dead and buried
he would pull us out of the ground to stab us. I must go. I have sinned
in having so much intercourse with you. Be resigned, Claudio. Be a good
man, and we shall meet in heaven. The earth is a terrible place: I am
afraid of it. I want to shut myself up in the convent and be at peace. I
fear so much that I tremble all the time. Say addio."

"I cannot. Will you stay in bed to-morrow, and let me try if I cannot go
to Rome?"

"Say addio, Claudio. I dare not stay here any longer: I hear some one
outside my door. I say addio to you now. I shall not drop the ball
again."

She did not even draw it up again, for the thread caught on a nail in
the wall and broke. And at the same time there was a knock at her door.

"Silvia, why do you not go to bed?" Matteo called out: "I hear you up."

"I am going now," she made haste to answer, and in her terror threw
herself on the bed without undressing. She wondered if Matteo could hear
her heart beat through the wall or see how she was shaking.

The next morning at seven o'clock Silvia and her brother took their
seats in the clumsy coach that goes from Monte Compatri to Rome whenever
there are passengers enough to fill it, and after confused leavetakings
from all but the one she wished most to see they set out. Claudio was
invisible. In fact, he had lain on the ground all night beneath her
window, and now, hidden in a tree, was watching the winding road for an
occasional glimpse of the carriage as it bore his love away.

The peasants of Italy, when they see the Milky Way stretching its
wavering, cloudy path across the sky, shining as if made up of the
foot