And then she dropped on her knees before the boy, threw her arms about him and called on him by his name.

"Joseph! Speak to me! Open your eyes and speak!... What have you been doing with my child? He is ill. Why don't you send for a doctor? Don't stand there like fools. Go for a doctor, I tell you ... Joseph! Only a word!... Have you carried him home without his hat on? And it's snowing too! He'll get his death of cold ... what's this? Blood on his shirt?

And a wound? Look at this red spot. Have they shot him? No, no, it's impossible! A child! Joseph! Joseph! Speak to me!... Yes, his heart is beating." She was pressing her ear to the boy's breast. "Or is it only the beating in my head? Oh, where is the doctor? Why don't you send for him?"

They could not tell her that it was useless, that a doctor had seen the child already, and that all was over. All they could do was to stand round her with awe in their faces. She understood them without words.

Her hair fell from its knot, and her eyes began to blaze like the eyes of a maniac.

"They've killed my child!" she cried. "He's dead! My little boy is dead!

Only seven, and it was his birthday! O God! My child! What had he done that they should kill him?"

And then Bruno, who was standing by with a wild lustre in his eyes, said between his teeth, "Done? Done nothing but live under a Government of murderers and assassins."

The room filled with people. Neighbours who had never before set foot in the rooms came in without fear, for death was among them. They stood silent for the most part, only handing round the table the little cocked hat and the mace, with sighs and deep breathing. But some one speaking to Rossi told him what had happened. It was at the Spanish Steps. The delegate gave the word, and the Carabineers fired over the people's heads. But they hit the child and made him cold. His little heart had burst.

"And I was going to whip him," said Elena. "Not a minute before I was talking about the rod, and not giving him his supper. O God! I can never forgive myself."

And then the blessed tears came and she wept bitterly.

David Rossi put his arms about her, and her head fell on his breast. All barriers were broken down, and she clung to him and cried.

Just then cries came from the piazza--"Hurrah for the Revolution!" and "Down with the destroyers of the people!"--the woolly tones of voices shouting in the snow. Somebody on the stairs explained that a young man was going about waving a bloody handkerchief, and that the sight of it was exasperating the people to frenzy. Women were marching through the streets, and the entire city was on the point of insurrection.

In the dining-room the stricken ones still stood around the couch.

Presently there was a sound of singing outside. A great crowd was coming into the piazza, singing the Garibaldi Hymn. Bruno heard it, and the wild lustre in his eyes gave place to a look of savage joy. An awful oath burst from his lips, and he ran out of the house. At the next moment he was heard in the street, singing in a thundering voice:

"The tombs are uncovered, The dead arise, The martyrs are rising Before our eyes."

The old Garibaldian threw up his head like a warhorse at the call of battle, and his rickety limbs were going towards the door.

"Stay here, father," said Rossi, and the old man obeyed him.

Elena was quieter by this time. She was sitting by the child and stroking his little icy hand.

David Rossi, who had hardly spoken, went into his bedroom. His lips were tightly pressed together, his eyes were bloodshot, and his breath was labouring hard in his heaving breast.

He took up his dagger paper-knife, tried its point on his palm with two or three reckless thrusts and threw it back on the desk. Then he went down on his hands and knees and rummaged among the newspapers lying in heaps under the window. At last he found what he looked for. It was the six-chambered revolver which had been sent to him as a present. "I'll kill the man like a dog," he thought.

He loaded the revolver, put it in his breast-pocket, went back to the sitting-room, and made ready to go out.

X

Ten was striking on the different clocks of the city. Felice had lit the stove in the boudoir and the wood was burning in fitful blue and red flames. There was no other light in the room, and Roma lay with her body on the floor, and her face buried in the couch.

The world outside was full of fearful and unusual noises. Snow was still falling, and the voices heard through it had a peculiar sound of sobbing. The soft rolling of thunder came from a long way off, like the boom of a slow wave on a distant beach. At intervals there was the crackle of musketry, like the noise of rockets sent up in the night, and sometimes there were pitiful cries, smothered by the unreverberating snow, like the cries of a drowning man on a foundering ship at sea.

Roma, face downward, heard these sounds in the lapses of a terrible memory. She was seeing, as in a nightmare, the incidents of a night that was hardly six weeks past. One by one the facts flashed back upon her with a burning sense of shame, and she felt herself to be a sinner and a criminal.

It was the night of the royal ball at the Quirinal. The blaze of lights, the glitter of jewels, the brilliant throng of handsome men and lovely women, the clash of music, the whirl of dancing, and finally the smiles and compliments of the King. Then going home in the carriage in the early morning, swathed in furs over her thin white silk, with the Baron, in his decorations worn diagonally over his white breast, and through the glass the waning moon, the silent stars, the empty streets.

Then this room, this couch, sinking down on it, very tired, with eyes smiling and half closed, and nearly gone already into the mists of sleep. And then the Baron at her feet, pressing his lips to her wrist where the pulse was beating, kissing her arms and shoulders.... "Oh, dear! You are mad! I must not listen to you." And then burning words of love and passion: "My wife! My wife that is to be!" And then the call of her aunt from the adjoining chamber, "Roma!"

The sobbing sounds from outside broke in on Roma's nightmare, and when the chain of memory linked on again it was morning in her vision, and the Countess was comforting her in a whimpering voice:

"After all, God is merciful, and things that happen to everybody can be atoned for by prayer and penance. Besides, the Baron is a man of honour, and the poor maniac cannot last much longer."

The sobbing sounds in the snow, the cries far away, the crackle of the rifle-shots, the rumble of the thunder broke in again, and the elements outside seemed to whirl round her in the tempest of her trouble. For a moment she lifted her head and heard voices in the next room.

The Baron was still there, and from time to time, as he wrote his despatches, messengers came to take them away, to bring replies, and to deliver the latest news of the night. The populace had risen in all parts of the city, and the soldiers had charged them. There had been several misadventures and many arrests. The large house of detention by St. Andrea delle Frate was already full, but the people continued to hold out. They had disconnected the gas at the gasometer and cut the electric wires, and the city was plunged in darkness.

"Tell the electric light company to turn on the flashlight from Monte Mario," said the Baron.

And when the voices ceased in the drawing-room there came the deadened sound of the Countess's frightened treble behind the wall.

"O Holy Virgin, full of grace, save me! It would be a sin to let me die to-night! Holy Virgin, see! I have given thee two more candles. Art thou not satisfied? Save me from murder, Mother of God."

Roma saw another phase of her vision. It was filled with a new face, which made her at once happy and unhappy, proud and ashamed. Hitherto the only condition on which she had been able to live with the secret of her life was that she should think nothing about it. Now she was compelled to think, and she was asking herself if it was her duty to confess.

Before she married David Rossi she must tell him everything. She saw herself trying to do so. He was looking vacantly before him with the deep furrow that came to his forehead when he was strongly moved. She had sobbed out her story, telling all, excusing nothing, and now she was waiting for him to speak. He would take her side, he would tell her she had been more sinned against than sinning, that she had been young and alone at the mercy of an evil man, and that her will had not consented.

"No, no! It is impossible!" she cried aloud, and, startled by the sound of her voice, the Baron came into the room.

"My dear child!" he said, and he picked her up from the floor. "I shall never be able to forgive myself if you take things like this. Every tear you shed will burn my flesh like fire. Come now, dry these beautiful eyes and be calm."

She did not listen to him, but leaning on the stove and fingering with one hand the frame of her father's picture which hung above it, she said:

"I see now that happiness was not for me. There must be some punishment for every sin, however little one has been guilty of it, and perhaps this is God's way of asking for an expiation. It is very, very hard ...

it seems more than I deserve ... and heavier than I can bear ... but there is no help for it."

The tears she brushed from her eyes seemed to be gathering in her throat.

"The bitterest part of it is that I must make others suffer for it also.

He must suffer who has loved and trusted me. His love for me, my love for him, this has been dragging him down since the first day I knew him.

Perhaps he is in prison by this time."

Sobs interrupted her for a moment, and in a caressing tone the Baron tried to comfort her. It was natural that she should feel troubled, very natural and very womanly. But time was the great remedy for human ills.

It would heal everything.

"Roma, you have wounded and humiliated and insulted me, but you are the only woman in the world I would give one straw to have. I will make you the wife of the Dictator of Italy, and when all these troubles are over and you are great, and have forgotten what has taken place...."

"I can never forget and I don't want to be great. I only want to be good. Leave me!"

"You _are_ good. You have always been good. What happened was my fault alone, and you have nothing to reproach yourself with. I found you growing up to be a great woman, and passing out of my legal control, while I was bound down to a poor, helpless, living corpse. Some day you would meet a younger, freer man, and you would be lost to me for good.

Wasn't it human to try to hold you to me until the time came when I could claim you altogether? And if meanwhile this man has interposed...."

He pointed to the bust on the pedestal. She looked up at it, and then dropped her head.

"Put the man out of your mind, my dear, and all will be well. Probably he is in the hands of the authorities already. God grant it may be so!

No trouble about his arrest this time! It cannot be complicated by the danger of scandal. Nobody else's name and character will be concerned in it. And if it serves to dispose of a dangerous man and a subversive politician, I am willing to let everything else sleep."