s still standing with her hands over her ears, shaking with
terror and scarcely able to breathe, when footsteps resounded on the
floor behind her. Giddy and dazed, with one agonising thought she
turned, saw Rossi, and uttered a cry of relief. But he was coming down
on her with great staring eyes, and the look of a desperate maniac. For
one moment he stood over her in his ungovernable rage, and scalding and
blistering words poured out of him in a torrent.

"He's dead. D'you hear me? He's dead. But it's as much your work as
mine, and you will never think of yourself henceforward without remorse
and horror. I curse you by the love you've wronged and the heart you've
broken. I curse you by the hopes you wasted and the truth you've
outraged. I curse you by the memory of your father, the memory of a
saint and martyr."

Before his last words were spoken Roma had ceased to hear. With a feeble
moan, interrupted by a faint cry, she had slowly retreated before him,
and then fallen face downwards. Everything about her, Rossi, herself,
the room, the lamp on the table and the shadows cast by it, had mingled
and blended, and gone out in a complete obscurity.

VIII

When Roma regained consciousness, there was not a sound in the
apartment. Even the piazza outside was quiet. Somebody was playing a
mandoline a long way off, and the thin notes were trembling through the
still night. A dog was barking in the distance. Save for these sounds
everything was still.

Roma lay for some minutes in a state of semi-consciousness. Her head was
swimming with vague memories, and she was unable at first to disentangle
the thread of them. At length she remembered all that had happened, and
she wept bitterly.

But when the first tenderness was over the one feeling which seized and
held her was hatred of the Baron. Rossi had told her the man was dead,
and she felt no pity. The Baron deserved his death, and if Rossi had
killed him it was no crime.

She was still lying where she had fallen when a noise as of some one
moving came from the adjoining room. Then a voice called to her:

"Roma!"

It was the Baron's voice, broken and feeble. A great terror took hold of
her. Then came a sense of shame, and finally a feeling of relief. The
Baron was not dead. Thank God! O thank God!

She got up and went into the dining-room. The Baron was on his knees
struggling to climb to the couch. His shirt front was partly dragged ou