ed it all in fifty ways, and there is no escape. You cannot help me,
for no one can. But you have done me some little momentary good, just by
sitting there and hearing my story. Beyond that there is nothing to be
done."

The wretched man closed his eyes, and again leaned back against the
bright red wall, which threw his white face and dark-ringed eyes into
strong and painful relief. Don Teodoro was silent, bending his mind upon
the hideous problem. Bosio misunderstood him and spoke again without
moving.

"I know," he said. "You need not speak. I know by heart all the
reproaches I deserve, and I know that no human being, much less a holy
man like yourself, could possibly feel anything but horror at all
this--"

"I am very far from being a holy man," interrupted the priest. "If I
feel horror, it is for what has been, and may be, but not for you.
Bosio--" he hesitated a moment. "Will you come with me to Muro, and
leave all this?" he asked suddenly. "Will you come out of the world for
a while? No--I am not proposing to you to make a religious retreat. I
wish I could. I know the world, and you, and your people, for I lived
long among you, and I know that one cannot change one's soul, as one
changes one's coat--nor enter upon a retreat as one springs into the sea
for a bath in hot weather. What you have made yourself, you are. Heaven
itself would need time to unmake you. I speak just as one man to
another. Come with me to the mountains for a week, a month--as long as
you will. It is dreary and cold, and you will have to eat what you can
get; but you will have peace, for nobody will come up there to disturb
you. Meanwhile, something may happen. You are overwrought by all you
have seen and heard and felt. Whatever the countess may have said,
Donna Veronica is quite safe. My dear Bosio, people in your rank of
life do not murder one another for money nowadays. It is laughable, the
mere idea of it--"

"Laughable!" Bosio turned and looked at him. "If you had seen her eyes,
you would find it hard to laugh, I think. Such things happen rarely,
perhaps, but they happen sometimes."

Don Teodoro was not persuaded. He thought that Bosio, in his excited
state, very much overestimated the danger.

"At all events," he said, "nothing will happen, so long as there is the
possibility that you may marry her. If you come with me, you will at
least have time to think before acting. But here, you may be forced to
act before you have been ab