astery. The scene which had just closed upon her was terribly
distinct and vivid, but it began to narrow under the returning
impressions of the life that lay outside it. She hastened her steps,
with nervous anxiety to be again with her father--and with Tito--for
were they not together in her absence? The images of that vision, while
they clung about her like a hideous dream not yet to be shaken off, made
her yearn all the more for the beloved faces and voices that would
assure her of her waking life.

Tito, we know, was not with Bardo; his destiny was being shaped by a
guilty consciousness, urging on him the despairing belief that by this
time Romola possessed the knowledge which would lead to their final
separation.

And the lips that could have conveyed that knowledge were for ever
closed. The prevision that Fra Luca's words had imparted to Romola had
been such as comes from the shadowy region where human souls seek wisdom
apart from the human sympathies which are the very life and substance of
our wisdom; the revelation that might have come from the simple
questions of filial and brotherly affection had been carried into
irrevocable silence.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

A FLORENTINE JOKE.

Early the next morning Tito was returning from Bratti's shop in the
narrow thoroughfare of the Ferravecchi. The Genoese stranger had
carried away the onyx ring, and Tito was carrying away fifty florins.
It did just cross his mind that if, after all, Fortune, by one of her
able devices, saved him from the necessity of quitting Florence, it
would be better for him not to have parted with his ring, since he had
been understood to wear it for the sake of peculiar memories and
predilections; still, it was a slight matter, not worth dwelling on with
any emphasis, and in those moments he had lost his confidence in
fortune. The feverish excitement of the first alarm which had impelled
his mind to travel into the future had given place to a dull, regretful
lassitude. He cared so much for the pleasures that could only come to
him through the good opinion of his fellow-men, that he wished now he
had never risked ignominy by shrinking from what his fellow-men called
obligations.

But our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act
apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds
never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our
consciousness; and that dreadful vitality of deeds was pr