etrospect than an indistinct recurrence of impressions which blended
themselves with her agitating fears, as if her actual anxiety were a
revival of the strong yearning she had once before brought to this
spot--to be repelled by marble rigidity. She gave no space for the
remembrance to become more definite, for she at once opened the
handbills, thinking she should perhaps be able to read them in the
interval before Fra Girolamo appeared. But by the time she had read to
the end of the one that recommended the observance of the law, the door
was opening, and doubling up the papers she stood expectant.

When the Frate had entered she knelt, according to the usual practice of
those who saw him in private; but as soon as he had uttered a
benedictory greeting she rose and stood opposite to him at a few yards'
distance. Owing to his seclusion since he had been excommunicated, it
had been an unusually long while since she had seen him, and the late
months had visibly deepened in his face the marks of over-taxed mental
activity and bodily severities; and yet Romola was not so conscious of
this change as of another, which was less definable. Was it that the
expression of serene elevation and pure human fellowship which had once
moved her was no longer present in the same force, or was it that the
sense of his being divided from her in her feeling about her godfather
roused the slumbering sources of alienation, and marred her own vision?
Perhaps both causes were at work. Our relations with our fellow-men are
most often determined by coincident currents of that sort; the
inexcusable word or deed seldom comes until after affection or reverence
has been already enfeebled by the strain of repeated excuses.

It was true that Savonarola's glance at Romola had some of that hardness
which is caused by an egotistic prepossession. He divined that the
interview she had sought was to turn on the fate of the conspirators, a
subject on which he had already had to quell inner voices that might
become loud again when encouraged from without. Seated in his cell,
correcting the sheets of his `Triumph of the Cross,' it was easier to
repose on a resolution of neutrality.

"It is a question of moment, doubtless, on which you wished to see me,
my daughter," he began, in a tone which was gentle rather from
self-control than from immediate inclination. "I know you are not wont
to lay stress on small matters."

"Father, you know what it is befo