.

'Of that prelude there is but one phrase which finds a place in this sad
finale: So many hairs on my head, so many thorns in my woeful destiny!

'I am going, and what will he do when I am far away? What will Francesca
do?

'The change in Francesca still remains incomprehensible,
inexplicable--an enigma that torments and bewilders me. She loves
him--but since when?--and does he know it? Confess, oh, my soul, to this
fresh misery. A new poison is added to that already infecting me--I am
jealous!

'But I am prepared for any suffering, even the most horrible; I know
well the martyrdom that awaits me; I know that the anguish of these days
is as nought compared to that which I must face presently, the terrible
cross on which my soul must hang. I am ready. All I ask, oh my God, is a
respite, a short respite for the hours that remain to me here. To-morrow
I shall have need of all my strength.

'How strangely sometimes the incidents of one's life repeat themselves!
This evening in the drawing-room, I seemed to have gone back to the 16th
of September, when I first played and sang and my thoughts began to
occupy themselves with him. This evening again I was seated at the
piano, and the same subdued light illumined the room, and next door
Manuel and the Marchese were at the card-table. I played the Gavotte _of
the Yellow Ladies_, of which Francesca is so fond and which I heard some
one trying to play on the 16th of September while I sat up in my room
and began my nightly vigils of unrest.

'He, I am sure, is not asleep. When I came upstairs, he went in and took
the Marchese's place opposite to my husband. Are they playing still?
Doubtless he is thinking and his heart aches while he plays. What are
his thoughts?--what are his sufferings?

'I cannot sleep. I shall go out into the loggia. I want to see if they
are still playing, or if he has gone to his room. His windows are at the
corner, in the second story.

'It is a clear, mild night. There are lights still in the card-room. I
stayed a long time in the loggia looking down at the light shining out
against the cypresses and mingling with the silvery whiteness of the
moon. I am trembling from head to foot. I cannot describe the almost
tragic effect of those lighted windows behind which the two men are
playing, opposite to one another, in the deep silence of the night,
scarcely broken by the dull sob of the sea. And they will perhaps play
on till morning, if he will pande