s compelled to let her cry, and had to reflect upon their present
situation unaided. They had passed the city gates. Voices on the
coachman's box had given German pass-words. She would have screamed then
had not the carriage seemed to her a sanctuary from such creatures as
foreign soldiers, whitecoats; so she cowered on. They were in the starry
open country, on the high-road between the vine-hung mulberry trees. She
held the precious head of her mistress, praying the Saints that strength
would soon come to her to talk of their plight, or chatter a little
comfortingly at least; and but for the singular sweetness which it
shot thrilling to her woman's heart, she would have been fretted when
Vittoria, after one long-drawn wavering sob, turned her lips to the
bared warm breast, and put a little kiss upon it, and slept.

CHAPTER XXIII

FIRST HOURS OF THE FLIGHT

Vittoria slept on like an outworn child, while Giacinta nodded over her,
and started, and wondered what embowelled mountain they might be passing
through, so cold was the air and thick the darkness; and wondered
more at the old face of dawn, which appeared to know nothing of her
agitation. But morning was better than night, and she ceased counting
over her sins forward and backward; adding comments on them, excusing
some and admitting the turpitude of others, with 'Oh! I was naughty,
padre mio! I was naughty--she huddled them all into one of memory's
spare sacks, and tied the neck of it, that they should keep safe for her
father-confessor. At such times, after a tumult of the blood, women have
tender delight in one another's beauty. Giacinta doted on the marble
cheek, upturned on her lap, with the black unbound locks slipping across
it; the braid of the coronal of hair loosening; the chance flitting
movement of the pearly little dimple that lay at the edge of the bow of
the joined lips, like the cradling hollow of a dream. At whiles it would
twitch; yet the dear eyelids continued sealed.

Looking at shut eyelids when you love the eyes beneath, is more or less
a teazing mystery that draws down your mouth to kiss them. Their lashes
seem to answer you in some way with infantine provocation; and fine
eyelashes upon a face bent sideways, suggest a kind of internal smiling.
Giacinta looked till she could bear it no longer; she kissed the cheek,
and crooned over it, gladdened by a sense of jealous possession when she
thought of the adored thing her mistress had bee