pent of her promise, and there
was nothing to bind her to it. Hitherto there had been no risk, no
common danger. By a chain of natural circumstances he had made his way
into a most extraordinary position, but it was in her power, in a moment
of repentance, to force him from it. While the abbess was ill, Maria was
virtually mistress of the convent. At a word from her the doors might be
shut in his face. She might promise again, and bite her hand again, but
when it came to his waiting outside the garden gate, she might be seized
by a fit of repentance, and he might wait till morning.

As he sat in his room he realized all this, and more, for he knew that
on calm reflexion he meant to do what he had that morning threatened in
his haste. He had never been attached to life for its own sake.
Melancholic men often are not. He had many times thought over the
subject of suicide with a sort of grim interest in it, which indicated
the direction his temper would take if he were ever absolutely defeated
in a matter which he had at heart.

Nothing he had ever felt in his life had taken hold of him as his love
for Maria Addolorata, for he had never really been in love before and he
had completely abandoned himself to it, as such a man was sure to do in
such surroundings. She was beautiful, but that was not all. Since he had
heard her sing, he knew that her voice and her rare talent together were
genius and nothing less. But that was far from being all. She was of his
own class, and he had been seeing her daily, when the peasant women
amongst whom he lived were little more than good-natured animals; but
even that was not all. He was at that time of life when a man's
character is apt to take a violent and sudden turn in its ultimate
direction, when the forces that have been growing show themselves all at
once, when passion, having appealed as yet but to the man, has climbed
and is within reach of his soul, to take hold of it and twist it, or to
be finally conquered, perhaps, in a holy life. But Dalrymple was very
far from being the kind of man who could have taken refuge against
himself in higher things. At a time when materialism was beginning to
seem a great thing, he was a strong materialist in scientific
questions. He grasped what he could see and held it, but what he could
not see had no existence for him. Nothing transcendental attracted him
beyond the sphere of mathematics. Yet he had not the materialist's
temperament, for the H