f him in abhorrence when they quitted
the village. "Not to be born a woman, and voluntarily to be a woman!"
ejaculated Laura. "How many, how many are we to deduct from the male
population of Italy? Cross in hand, he should be at the head of our
arms, not whimpering in a corner for white bread. Wretch! he makes the
marrow in my bones rage at him. He chronicled pig that squeaked."

"Why had she been so gentle with him?"

"Because, my dear, when I loathe a thing I never care to exhaust my
detestation before I can strike it," said the true Italian.

They were on the field of Goito; it was won. It was won against odds.
At Pastrengo they witnessed an encounter; this was a battle. Vittoria
perceived that there was the difference between a symphony and a lyric
song. The blessedness of the sensation that death can be light and easy
dispossessed her of the meaner compassion, half made up of cowardice,
which she had been nearly borne down by on the field of Pastrengo. At
an angle on a height off the left wing of the royal army the face of
the battle was plain to her: the movements of the troops were clear as
strokes on a slate. Laura flung her life into her eyes, and knelt and
watched, without summing one sole thing from what her senses received.

Vittoria said, "We are too far away to understand it."

"No," said Laura, "we are too far away to feel it."

The savage soul of the woman was robbed of its share of tragic emotion
by having to hold so far aloof. Flashes of guns were but flashes of guns
up there where she knelt. She thirsted to read the things written by
them; thirsted for their mystic terrors, somewhat as souls of great
prophets have craved for the full revelation of those fitful underlights
which inspired their mouths.

Charles Albert's star was at its highest when the Piedmontese drums beat
for an advance of the whole line at Goito.

Laura stood up, white as furnace-fire. "Women can do some good by
praying," she said. She believed that she had been praying. That was her
part in the victory.

Rain fell as from the forehead of thunder. From black eve to black dawn
the women were among dead and dying men, where the lanterns trailed a
slow flame across faces that took the light and let it go. They returned
to their carriage exhausted. The ways were almost impassable for
carriage-wheels. While they were toiling on and exchanging their
drenched clothes, Vittoria heard Merthyr's voice speaking to Beppo on
the box. H