nt looking at the faded painting of the Madonna, almost effaced
against its rocky background. Within the glass that sheltered it stood
vases of artificial flowers, and on the ledge outside the glass were two
or three bunches of real flowers, placed there by peasants returning to
their homes in Castel Vecchio from their labors in the vineyards and the
orchards. There were also two branches with clustering, red-gold oranges
lying among the flowers. It was a strange, wild place. The precipice of
rock, which the castello dominated, leaned slightly forward above the
head of the Madonna, as if it meditated overwhelming her. But she smiled
gently, as if she had no fear of it, bending down her pale eyes to the
child who lay upon her girlish knees. Among the bowlders, the wild cactus
showed its spiked leaves, and in the daytime the long black snakes sunned
themselves upon the stones.

To Hermione this lonely and faded Madonna, smiling calmly beneath the
savagely frowning rock upon which dead men had built long years ago a
barbarous fastness, was touching in her solitude. There was something
appealing in her frailness, in her thin, anaemic calm. How long had she
been here? How long would she remain? She was fading away, as things fade
in the night. Yet she had probably endured for years, would still be here
for years to come, would be here to receive the wild flowers of peasant
children, the prayers of peasant lovers, the adoration of the poor, who,
having very little here, put their faith in far-off worlds, where they
will have harvests surely without reaping in the heat of the sun, where
they will have good wine without laboring in the vineyards, where they
will be able to rest without the thought coming to them, "If to-day I
rest, to-morrow I shall starve."

As Hermione looked at the painting lit by the little lamp, at the gifts
of the flowers and the fruit, she began to feel as if indeed a woman
dwelt there, in that niche of the crag, as if a heart were there, a soul
to pity, an ear to listen.

Lucrezia knelt down quietly, lit her candle, turned it upside down till
the hot wax dripped onto the rock and made a foundation for it, then
stuck it upright, crossed herself silently, and began to pray. Her lips
moved quickly. The candle-flame flickered for a moment, then burned
steadily, sending its thin fire up towards the evening star. After a
moment Hermione knelt down beside her.

She had never before prayed at a shrine. It wa