nzo wended
his way home.

Fabio had intended to have an explanation with Muzio directly after
supper, but his strange guest did not return to supper. Then Fabio
decided to defer the interview with Muzio until the following day, and
husband and wife withdrew to their bed-chamber.

IX

Valeria speedily fell asleep; but Fabio could not get to sleep. In the
nocturnal silence all that he had seen, all that he had felt, presented
itself to him in a still more vivid manner; with still greater
persistence did he ask himself questions, to which, as before, he found
no answer. Was Muzio really a magician? And had he already poisoned
Valeria? She was ill ... but with what malady? While he was engrossed in
painful meditations, with his head propped on his hand and restraining
his hot breathing, the moon again rose in the cloudless sky; and
together with its rays, through the semi-transparent window-panes, in
the direction of the pavilion, there began to stream in--or did Fabio
merely imagine it?--there began to stream in a breath resembling a
faint, perfumed current of air....

Now an importunate, passionate whisper began to make itself heard ...
and at that same moment he noticed that Valeria was beginning to stir
slightly. He started, gazed; she rose, thrust first one foot, then the
other from the bed, and, like a somnambulist, with her dull eyes
strained straight ahead, and her arms extended before her, she advanced
toward the door into the garden! Fabio instantly sprang through the
other door of the bedroom, and briskly running round the corner of the
house, he closed the one which led into the garden.... He had barely
succeeded in grasping the handle when he felt some one trying to open
the door from within, throwing their force against it ... more and more
strongly ... then frightened moans resounded.

* * * * *

"But Muzio cannot have returned from the town, surely," flashed through
Fabio's head, and he darted into the pavilion....

What did he behold?

Coming to meet him, along the path brilliantly flooded with the radiance
of the moonlight, also with arms outstretched and lifeless eyes staring
widely--was Muzio.... Fabio ran up to him, but the other, without
noticing him, walked on, advancing with measured steps, and his
impassive face was smiling in the moonlight like the face of the Malay.
Fabio tried to call him by name ... but at that moment he heard a window
bang in th