im on his way.

IV

The third act of the comedy should open on Selvaggia in her bed reading
the letter. Beautiful as she may have looked, flushed and loose-haired
at that time, it is better to leave her alone with her puzzle, and
choose rather the hour of her enlightenment. Ridolfo and Ugolino were
booted and spurred, their hooded hawks were on their wrists when she got
speech of them. They were not very willing witnesses in a cause which
now seemed to tell against themselves. Selvaggia's cheeks burned as with
poor Cino's live coal when she could piece together all the shameful
truth; tears brimmed at her eyes, and these too were scalding hot.
Selvaggia, you must understand, was a very good girl, her only sin being
none of her accomplishment; she was a child who looked like a young
woman. Certainly she could not help that, though all the practice of her
race were against her. She had never sought love, never felt to need it,
nor cared to harbour it when it came. Love knocked at her heart, asking
an entry; her heart was not an inn, she thought, let the wayfarer go on.
But the knocking had continued till her ears had grown to be soothed by
the gentle sound; and now it had stopped for ever, and, Pitiful Mother,
for what good reason? Oh, the thing was horrible, shameful,
unutterable! She was crying with rage; but as that spent itself a great
warm flood of genuine sorrow tided over her, floated her away: she cried
as though her heart was breaking; and now she cried for pity, and at
last she cried for very love. A pale ethereal Cino, finger on lip, rose
before her; a halo burned about his head; he seemed a saint, he should
be hers! Ugolino and Ridolfo, helpless and ashamed before her outburst,
went out bickering to their sport; and Selvaggia, wild as her name,
untaught, with none to tutor her, dared her utmost--dared, poor girl,
beyond her strength.

Late in the afternoon of that day Cino, in the oratory of his hermitage,
getting what comfort he could out of an angular Madonna frescoed there,
heard a light step brush the threshold. The sun, already far gone in the
west, cast on the white wall a shadow whose sight set his head spinning.
He turned hastily round. There at the door stood Selvaggia in a crimson
cloak; for the rest, a picture of the Tragic Muse, so woebegone, so
white, so ringed with dark she was.

Cino, on his feet, muttered a prayer to himself. He covered his scarred
mouth, but not before the girl had