d not, she
would have had the pride to tear her heart clean from love's terrible
hands, whole or broken, as might be, and to toss it, with the dead dull
weeks into old time's sack of irrevocably lost and useless things, and
so to live her life out, loveless, in the still haven of Gianluca's
friendship. But, having his love, she had not such pride; and the
loyalty she truly had was matched alone against all human nature since
the world began.

Do what she would, she yielded sometimes to that great wish to go
suddenly to her own room and be alone. Then, standing at her window when
the mist whitened in the valley under the broad moon, she listened, and
instantly the air was full of music again as love lifted up its voice,
and sweetly chanted the melody of life. With parted lips she listened,
till the moonlight filled her eyes, and her heart fluttered softly, and
her throat was warm.

And sometimes, too, while she was there, the man who loved her so
silently and so well was by his friend's side, tending as his own the
life that stood between him and the hope of happiness; loving both him
and her, but honour best. But sometimes he, too, was alone in his own
room, and even at his window, facing the same broad moon, the same white
mist in the sleeping valley, the same dark, crested hills, but not
hearing the music that the woman heard. He could be calm for a while as
he looked out; but presently, without warning, he swallowed hard, and
again, as on the fatal day, he held her little hand in his, under the
priest's great sign of the cross, and his own blood shrieked in his
ears. In cruel anger against himself, he turned from the window then and
paced the room with short, braced steps, till at last he threw himself
into a deep chair and sullenly took the first book at hand, to read
himself back to the monotony of all he had to bear.

And so those two fearless ones went through the days and weeks in
twofold terror of themselves and each of the other, and the slow,
wordless tragedy was acted before eyes that saw but did not understand.
Still Gianluca refused to go away, and still Veronica refused to send
for the syndic. She would not yield to the Duchessa, who found herself
opposed both by her son and her son's wife.

No one knew how much Veronica herself still hoped, when the bright
autumn days were broken at last by the first winter storm that rose out
of the dark south in monstrous wrath against such perpetual calm. She
her