ment me? Because he knew something. It was about
the child. Didn't you know I had a child? It was born when my husband
was away. He was coming home, and I was in terror."

The red light was on the emaciated face. Roma was sitting in the shadow
with a roaring in her ears.

"It died, and I went to confession.... I thought nobody knew.... But the
Baron knows everything.... After that I did whatever he told me."

The thick voice stopped. Only the ticking of a little clock was audible.
The Countess had dozed off. All her vanity of vanities, her intrigues,
her life-long frenzies, her sins and sufferings were wrapt in the
innocence of sleep.

Roma looked down at the poor, wrinkled, rouged face, now streaked with
sweat and with black lines from the pencilled eyebrows, and noiselessly
rose to go. She was feeling a sense of guilt in herself that stirred her
to the depths of abasement.

The Countess awoke. She was again in pain, and her voice was now
different.

"Roma! Is that you?"

"Yes, aunt."

"Why are you sitting in the darkness? I have a horror of darkness. You
know that quite well."

Roma turned on the lights.

"Have I been speaking? What have I been saying?"

Roma tried to prevaricate.

"You are telling me a falsehood. You know you are. You gave me that drug
to make me tell you my secrets. But I know what I told you and it was
all a lie. You needn't think because you've been listening.... It was a
lie, I tell you...."

The Sister came back at that moment, and Roma went to her room. She did
not write her usual letter to David Rossi that night. Instead of doing
so, she knelt by Elena's little Madonna, which she had set up on a table
by her bed.

Her own secret was troubling her. She had wanted to take it to some one,
some woman, who would listen to her and comfort her. She had no mother,
and her tears had begun to fall.

It was then that she thought of the world-mother, and remembered the
prayer she had heard a thousand times but never used before.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of
death--Amen!"

When she rose from her knees she felt like a child who had been crying
and was comforted.

IX

For some days after this the house was in a tumult. Men in red caps
labelled "Casa di Vendita" were tearing up carpets, dragging out pieces
of furniture and marking them. The catalogue was made, and bills were
posted outside the street door