Sister Giovanna looked at him again, but still she did not speak.

'Though I am a priest,' continued Monsignor Saracinesca, 'I am a man of the world in the sense of having belonged to it, and I now live less apart from it than I could wish, though it is not such a thoroughly bad place as those say who do not know it. I do not feel that I got rid of all obligations to those who still belong to it when I was ordained, and I do not think that when you took the veil in a working order, you dropped all obligation to the persons with whom you had lived till then. In doing so, you might be depriving some one else of a right.'

Sister Giovanna listened to this exposition in silence and tried to follow it.

'In my opinion,' the prelate went on, 'Giovanni Severi has a just claim to see you. I speak under authority and I may be wrong, but it can only be a matter of judgment and of opinion, and since your Mother Superior has asked for mine, I give it as well as I can. You are not a cloistered nun, Sister. There is no reason why you should not receive a friend whom you have believed to be dead for years and who has unexpectedly come back to life.'

'Back to the life I left for his sake!'

Again she looked away from the light, but her face could not turn whiter than it was.

'It was terribly sudden,' said Monsignor Saracinesca, after a moment's pause. 'You will no doubt wait a few days before seeing him, till you feel quite able to face what must be a very painful interview.'

'I am not afraid of it now. I was weak when we recognised each other. I cannot quite remember—I heard him call me and I saw his eyes——'

'And you must have fainted. You were carried out to the well at once.'

'Who carried me?' asked the nun quickly.

'Doctor Pieri and Giovanni Severi.'

She made a slight movement.

'He carried me!'

She spoke almost unconsciously, and a very faint glow rose through her paleness, as when white glass is warmed an instant in the mouth of the furnace and then drawn back and quickly cooled again.

'Shall I talk with him before you meet?' asked the churchman presently.

Sister Giovanna did not answer at once; she seemed to be thinking.

'You know better than any one what my life has been,' she said at last. 'It was to you that I went for advice five years ago, and again before I took the veil. If you had thought it even distantly possible that he might be alive, you would not have let me take final vows.'

'Heaven forbid!' answered Monsignor Saracinesca very earnestly.

'Though I believed him dead, you knew that I loved him with all my heart.'

'Yes. As dearly as when you had last seen him alive.'

'I love him still. Is that wrong?'

'No.'

He said the word without hesitation, in all sincerity and true conviction, but the nun had expected another answer; a quick movement of the head showed that she was surprised.

'Are you sure?' she asked in a low and wondering tone.

'Yes, because I am sure that your love for him is as innocent as it ever was. The religious life is not meant to kill human affection. Saint Benedict loved his sister Scholastica devotedly; Saint Francis was probably more sincerely attached to Saint Clare than to any living person.'

'I only know that I love him as dearly as ever,' said Sister Giovanna.

The churchman looked at her keenly for a moment, and she did not avoid his eyes.

'Would you break your vows for him?' he asked, with sudden directness.

The nun started as if he had struck her and half rose from her chair.

'Break my vows?' she cried, her eyes blazing with indignation.

But Monsignor Saracinesca only nodded and laid his thin hand flat on the table, towards her. She sank to her seat again.

'Then I know that, although you may love him more than any one in the world, you do not love him better than the work you have promised to do.'

'Heaven forbid!'

He had used the very same expression a few moments earlier, but with a different tone; for him it had been an asseveration of good faith, but with her it was more like a prayer. She had resented his question as if it had been an insult, but when he showed how much he trusted her, she began to distrust herself. She would die the martyr's death rather than break her vows in deed, but she was too diffident of her own womanhood not to fear a fall from the dignity of heartfelt resignation to the inward ignominy of an earthly regret. Besides, 'the work she had promised to do' had been promised for his sake, not for its own; not for any gain to her soul, but in the earnest hope that it might profit his, by God's mercy. Since he was not dead, but alive, the chief purpose of it died with his return to life. She did not love the work she had promised to do more than she loved him; that was not true, and never had been. All had been for him—her vow, her work, and her prayers. Heaven forbid, indeed, that she should now set him before them; yet it was hard not to do so and there was only one possible way; in a changed sense they must be given for him still, and for his salvation, else she could not give at all.

Monsignor Saracinesca had watched her progress from her noviciate to her present position of responsibility, and had often spoken of her with the Mother Superior. He would not have advised every nun to do what he thought best in her case. There was not another in the community, except the Mother herself, whom he would have trusted so fully. But, being what she was, his honourable sense of justice to a man who had suffered much and must suffer more impelled him to act as he did. As he himself said, it was a matter of opinion and judgment, and his own approved the course. Those may blame him who think otherwise, but no one can find fault with Sister Giovanna for following his advice; she had a right to believe that it was the best, and as for herself, she had never hesitated. The mere suggestion that she should not see Giovanni at least once and alone looked to her outrageous and contrary to all sense, as perhaps it was.

Monsignor Saracinesca would see him first and arrange the meeting. He thought it should take place in the cloistered garden.

'Why not here, in my office?' asked the nun.

But the churchman objected. If the two were to talk together, out of hearing, they must not be out of sight. Never, under any circumstances, should any one be able to say that there had been any secrecy about their interview. He himself would bring Giovanni to the place and the Mother Superior would accompany the nun. He and the Mother would withdraw into the hall and wait until Sister Giovanna dismissed Severi. The Mother would then join her, and Monsignor Saracinesca would go away with Giovanni.

In order to forestall evil speaking more effectually, the two should meet on the afternoon of the day on which the nun's week of duty as supervising nurse came to an end. On that evening she would go away to nurse a private case, and before that patient was recovered, Ugo Severi would certainly be well enough to go home, and Giovanni's daily visits to the hospital would have ceased. It would thus be easy to prove that after their only interview, in what might be called a public place, they had not been within the same walls at the same time.

No one who has watched the politics of the so-called 'socialist' party in Rome during the past twenty years will wonder at these precautions nor even call them exaggerated. To all intents and purposes the 'Vatican question' has ceased to exist; the Italian Government may fairly be said to be at peace with the Church; the old bitterness may survive amongst certain prejudiced people, chiefly in small towns, but the spirit of this time is a spirit of good-will and mutual forbearance, and the forces that were once so fiercely opposed actually work together for the common good in many more cases than the world knows of. The first article of the Italian Constitution states that the religion of the Kingdom is that of the Roman Catholic Church; it is, and it will continue to be, and no attempt will ever be made on the part of the Monarchy to change or to cancel that opening clause. The danger to which the Church is exposed lies in another quarter, and threatens not only the Church, but Christianity in all its forms; not only Christianity, but the Monarchy; and not the Monarchy only, but all constitutional and civilised government. It is anarchy; and though it boasts itself to be socialism, true socialists disclaim it and its doings and all its opinions. If it can be so far honoured as to be counted as a party, it is the party that murdered King Humbert, that assassinated the Empress of Austria, and that would sooner or later kill the Pope, if he left the safe refuge which some persons still insist on calling his prison.

It is the party that continually spies upon all religious and charitable institutions in Rome, and does not hesitate to invent stories of crime outright when it fails to detect one of those little flaws which its press magnifies to stains of abomination.

Monsignor Saracinesca understood these things better than the others concerned, and at least as well as any one in Rome. As for Giovanni, he had known him a little in former days and took him to be a man of honour, who would submit to any conditions necessary for protecting the nun from calumny. But he could hardly believe that the young officer's feelings had undergone no change in five years, for he judged men as most men judge each other. It was one thing to fall in love with a charming young girl in her first season; it was quite another to love her faithfully for five years, without ever seeing her or hearing from her, and to feel no disappointment on finding her as much changed as Angela was now, pale, sorrow-worn, and of no particular age. The true bloom of youth is something real, but it rarely lasts more than two years; it is as subtle and indescribable as the bloom of growing roses, which is gone within an hour after they are cut, though their beauty may be preserved for many days. There was the nun's habit, too, and the veil and wimple, proclaiming another and a greater change from which there was no return.

Ippolito Saracinesca had never been in love, even in his early youth; it was no wonder that he was mistaken in such a man as Giovanni Severi. The only danger he reckoned with lay in Sister Giovanna's own heart, and he felt that he could count on her courage, her self-respect, and most of all on her profoundly religious nature. No danger is ever overcome without danger, said Mimos. In the case of such a woman it was better, for her sake, to accept such risk as there might be in a single interview which must be decisive and final, than to let her live on haunted by disturbing memories and harassed by regret.



CHAPTER XIV

It was raining when Giovanni and Monsignor Saracinesca rang at the door of the Convent. The Mother Superior had ordered two rush-bottomed chairs to be brought out of the hall and placed under the shelter of the cloister just on one side of the glass door; for Sister Giovanna was to receive a visit, as she explained, from an officer who had known her father and had business with her. Such things had happened before in the community, and the lay sister was not surprised. She carried the chairs out and set them in what she considered a proper position, about two yards apart and both facing the garden. The rain fell softly and steadily, the sky was of an even dove-grey, and the smell of the damp earth and the early spring flowers filled the cloister.

Giovanni was a soldier and would impose his military punctuality upon the prelate, who, like most churchmen, had a clearer idea of eternity than of definite time. As the Convent clock was striking, therefore, the Mother Superior and Sister Giovanna came down the narrow stairs, for they had been together a quarter of an hour, though they had scarcely exchanged half-a-dozen words. They walked slowly round under the vaulted cloister, the Mother on the right, the nun on the left, according to the rigid custom, and they had just turned the last corner and were in sight of the two chairs when the glass door opened.

Monsignor Saracinesca's voice was heard.

'Remember what I have said. I trust you, and you know that the cloister is open to every one.'

'Yes,' Giovanni answered, as both appeared on the threshold.

They saw the two nuns already near and made a few steps to meet them. Monsignor Saracinesca greeted the Mother, who bent her head as she answered him; Giovanni stood still, his eyes fixed on Angela's face. But she looked steadily down at the flagstones, and her hands were hidden under the broad scapular of white cloth that hung straight down from under her gorget to her feet.

There are no awkward silences when churchmen or nuns meet, still less if the meeting takes place by appointment, for each knows exactly what he or she is expected to say and says it, deliberately and without hesitation. In less than a minute after they had met, the Mother and Monsignor Saracinesca entered the hall together and closed the glass door after them. The soldier and the nun were face to face at last.

As soon as Giovanni heard the door shut he made one step forward and stretched out both his hands, thinking to take hers. She made no movement, but raised her eyes, and when he saw them, they were still and dull. Then she slowly held out her right hand, and it was cold and inert when he took it. She drew back at once and sat down, and he took the other chair, bringing it a little nearer, and turning it so that he could see her. He was cruelly disappointed, but he was the first to speak.

'I thought you were glad to know that I am alive,' he said coldly, 'but I see that you were only frightened, the other day. I am sorry to have startled you.'

She steadied herself before answering.

'Yes, I was startled. Your letter did not reach me till afterwards.'

The garden was whirling before her as if she were being put under ether, and the little twisted columns that upheld the arches of the cloister chased each other furiously, till she thought she was going to fall from her chair. She could not hear what he said next, for a surging roar filled her ears as when the surf breaks at an angle on a long beach and sounds one deep, uninterrupted note. He was explaining why the mail steamer had not reached Italy several days before him, but she did not understand; she only knew when he ceased speaking.

'It is the inevitable—always the inevitable,' she said, making a desperate effort and yet not saying anything she wished to say.

But her tone told him how deeply she was moved, and his fiery energy broke out.

'Nothing is inevitable!' he cried. 'There is nothing that cannot be undone, if I can live to undo it!'

That was not what she expected, if she expected anything, but it brought back her controlling self that had been dazed and wandering and had left her almost helpless. She started and turned her face full to his, but drawing back in her chair.

'What do you mean?' she asked.

'Angela!'

The appeal of love was in his voice, as he bent far forward, but she raised her hand in warning.

'No, "Sister Giovanna," please,' she said, checking him, though gently.

He felt the slight rebuke, and remembered that the place was public to the community.

'It was not by chance that you took my name with the veil,' he said, almost in a whisper. 'Did you love me then?'

'I believed that you had been dead two years,' answered the nun slowly.

'But did you love me still, when I was dead?'

'Yes.'

She did not lower her voice, for she was not ashamed, but she looked down. He forgot her rebuke, and called her by her old name again, that had meant life and hope and everything to him through years of captivity.

'Angela!' He did not heed her gesture now, nor the quick word she spoke. 'Yes, I will call you Angela—you love me now——'

She checked him again, with more energy.

'Hush! If you cannot be reasonable, I shall go away!'

'Reasonable!'

There was contempt in his tone, but he sat upright again and said no more.

'Listen to me,' said Sister Giovanna, finding some strength in the small advantage she had just gained. 'I have not let you come here in order to torment you or cheat you, and I mean to tell you the truth. You have a right to know it, and I still have the right to tell it, because there is nothing in it of which I am ashamed. Will you hear me quietly, whatever I say?'

'Yes, I will. But I cannot promise not to answer, when you have done.'

'There is no answer to what I am going to say. It is to be final.'

'We shall see,' said Giovanni gravely, though with no conviction.

But the nun was satisfied, for he was clearly willing to listen. The meeting had disturbed her peace even more than she had expected, but she had done her best during several days to prepare herself for it, and had found strength to decide what she must say, and to repeat it over and over again till she knew it by heart.

'You were reported to be dead,' she began—'killed with the rest of them. You had your share in the great military funeral, and I, and all the world, believed that you were buried with your comrades. Your name is engraved with theirs upon their tomb, in the roll of honour, as that of a man who perished in his country's service. I went there with Madame Bernard before I began my noviciate, and I went again, for the last time, before I took the veil. I had loved you living and I loved you dead.'

Giovanni moved as if he were going to speak, but she would not let him.

'No, hear me!' she cried anxiously. 'I offered God my life and my strength for your sake, and if I have done any good here in five years, as novice and nun, it has been in the hope that it might be accepted for you, if your soul needed it. Though you may not believe in such things, do you at least understand me?'

'Indeed I do, and I am grateful—most grateful.'

She was a little disappointed by his tone, for he spoke with an evident effort.

'It was gladly given,' she said. 'But now you have come back to life——'

She hesitated. With all her courage and strength, she could not quite control her memory, and the words she had prepared so carefully were suddenly confused. Giovanni completed the sentence for her in his own way.

'I have come to life to find you dead for me, as I have been dead for you. Is that what you were going to say?'

She was still hesitating.

'Was it that?' he insisted.

'No,' she answered, at last. 'Not dead for you—alive for you.'

He would have caught at a straw, and the joy came into his face as he quickly held out his hand to her; but she would not take it: hers were both hidden under her white cloth scapular and she shrank from him. The light went out of his eyes.

'I might have known!' he said, deeply disappointed. 'You do not mean it. I suppose you will explain that you are alive to pray for me!'

'You promised to listen quietly, whatever I might say.'

'Yes.' He controlled himself. 'I will,' he added, after a moment. 'Go on.'

'I am not changed,' said Sister Giovanna, 'but my life is. That is what I meant by the inevitable. No person can undo what I have done'—Giovanni moved impatiently—'no power can loose me from my vows.'

In spite of himself, the man's temper broke out.

'You are mad,' he answered roughly, 'or else you do not know that you can be free.'

'Hush!' cried the nun, trying once more to check him. 'Your promise—remember it!'

'I break it! I will not listen meekly to such folly! Before you took the vow, you had given me your word, as I gave you mine, that we would be man and wife, and since I am not dead, no promise or oath made after that is binding! I know that you love me still, as you did then, and if you will not try to free yourself, then by all you believe, and by all I honour, I will set you free!'

It was a challenge if it was not a threat, and Sister Giovanna defended herself as she could. But she was painfully conscious that something in her responded with a thrill to the cry of the pursuer. Nevertheless, she answered with a firm refusal.

'You cannot make me do what I will not,' she said.

'I can and I will!' he retorted vehemently. 'It is monstrous that you should be bound by a promise made in ignorance, under a wretched mistake, on a false report that I was dead!'

'We were not even formally betrothed——'

'We loved each other,' interrupted Giovanni, 'and we had told each other so. That is enough. We belong to each other just as truly as if we were man and wife——'

'Even if we were,' said the nun, interrupting him in her turn, 'if I had taken my vows in the belief that my husband had been dead for years, I would not ask to be released!'

He stared at her, his temper suddenly chilled in amazement.

'But if it were a mistake,' he objected, 'if the Pope offered you a dispensation, would you refuse it?'

Sister Giovanna was prepared, for she had thought of that.

'If you had given a man your word of honour to pay a debt you owed him, would you break your promise if you suddenly found that you could use the money in another way, which would give you the keenest pleasure?'

'That is quite different! How can you ask such an absurd question?'

'It is not absurd, and the case is not so different as you think. I have given my word to God in heaven, and I must pay my debt.'

Giovanni was indignant again, and rebelled.

'You used to tell me that your God was just!'

'And I have heard you say that your only god was honour!' retorted the nun.

'Yes!' he answered hotly. 'It is! Honour teaches that the first promise given must be fulfilled before all others!'

'I have been taught that vows made to God must not be broken.'

She rose, as if the speech were final. Though they had been talking only a few minutes, she already felt that she could not bear much more.

'Surely you are not going already!' he cried, starting to his feet.

Sister Giovanna turned so that she was face to face with him.

'What is there left to say?' she asked, with a great effort.

'Everything! I told you that I would answer when you had finished, and now that you have nothing left to say, you must hear me! You said you would——'

'I said that there could be no answer.' Nevertheless she waited, motionless.

'But there is! The answer is that I will free you from the slavery to which you have sold your soul! The answer is, I love you, and it is yourself I love, the woman you are now, not the memory of your shadow from long ago, but you, you, your very self!'

Half out of his mind, he tried to seize her by the arm, to draw her to him; but he only caught her sleeve, and dropped it as she sprang back with a lightness and maiden grace that almost drove him mad. She drew herself up, offended and hurt.

'Remember what I am, and where you are!'

Giovanni's manner changed so suddenly that she would have been suspicious, if she had not been too much disturbed to reason. She fancied that she still controlled him.

'You are right,' he said; 'I beg your pardon. Only tell me when I may see you again.'

'Not for a long time—not till you can give me your word that you will control yourself. Till then, we must say good-bye.'

He was so quiet, all at once, that it was easier to say the word than she had expected.

'No,' he answered, 'not good-bye, for even if you will not see me, I shall be near you.'

'Near? Where?'

'I am living in my brother's rooms at the Magazine. I am in charge till he gets well. I asked permission to take his place on the day I arrived, from the Minister himself.'

'You have taken his place!' She could not keep her anxiety out of her voice.

'Yes, and I hope to get a shot at the fellow who wounded Ugo. But the post suits me, for the upper part of this house is in sight of my windows. If you look out towards the river, you can see where I live.'

He spoke so gently that she lingered instead of leaving him at once, as she had meant to do.

'And besides,' he went on, in the same tone, 'I shall come here every day until my brother can go home. I may meet you at any moment, in going to his room. You will not refuse to speak to me, will you?'

He smiled. He seemed quite changed within a few moments. But she shook her head.

'You will not see me here again,' she answered, 'for my week's turn as supervising nurse will be over this evening and I am going to a private case.'

'To-night?' Giovanni asked, with a little surprise.

'Yes, to-night.'

'Do you mean to say that you do not even have a day's rest after being on duty a whole week? What a life! But they must give you a few hours, surely! What time do you go off duty, and at what time do you go to your new patient? I suppose they send for you?'

'Yes, at about eight o'clock. That is the usual time, but I never know long beforehand. Arrangements of that sort are all made by the Mother Superior.'

It did not seem unnatural that he should ask questions about her occupation, now that he was calmer, nor could she think it wrong to answer them. Any one might have listened to what they were saying.

'I daresay you do not even know where you are going this evening?' Giovanni said.

She thought that he was talking only to keep her with him a little longer. Overstrained as she had been, it was a relief to exchange a few words quietly before parting from him.

'It is true,' she answered, after a moment's thought. 'I daresay the Mother Superior mentioned the name of the family, but if she did I have forgotten it. I shall get my instructions before I leave the house, as usual. I only know that it is a new case.'

'Yes,' Giovanni said, as if it did not interest him further. 'All the same, it is a shame that you should be made to work so hard! Before I go, tell me that you have forgiven me for losing my head just now. I think you have, but I want to hear you say so. Will you?'

It seemed little enough to forgive. Sister Giovanna felt so much relieved by his change of manner that she was even able to smile faintly. If he would always be as gentle, she could perhaps ask leave to see him again in six months. Now that the storm was over, it was a pure and innocent happiness to be with him.

'You will not do it again,' she said simply. 'Of course I forgive you.'

'Thank you. It is all I can expect, since you have told me that I was asking the impossible. You see Madame Bernard sometimes, do you not?'

'Yes. Almost every week.'

'She will give me news of you. I suppose I must not send you a message by her. That would be against the rules!'

'The message might be!' Sister Giovanna actually smiled again. 'But if it is not, there is no reason why she should not bring me a greeting from you.'

'But not a letter?'

'No. I would not take it from her. It would have to be given to the Mother Superior. If she were willing to receive it at all, it would be her duty to read it, and she would judge whether it should be given to me or not.'

'Is that the rule?' Giovanni asked, more indifferently than she had expected.

'Yes. It is the rule in our order. If it were not, who could prevent any one from writing to a nun?'

'I was not finding fault with it. I must not keep you standing here any longer. If you will not sit down and talk a little more, I had better be going.'

'Yes. You have been here long enough, I think.'

He did not press her. He was so submissive that if he had begged permission to stay a few minutes more she would have consented, and she wished he would, when she saw him holding out his hand to say good-bye; but she was too well pleased at having dominated his wild temper to make a suggestion which might betray weakness in herself.

She took his hand and was a little surprised to find it as cold as hers had been when he came; but his face was not pale—she forgot that five years of Africa had bronzed it too much for paleness—and he was very quiet and collected. She went to the door of the hall with him and opened it before he could do so for himself.

They parted almost like mere acquaintances, he bowing on the step, she bending her head. The Mother Superior and Monsignor Saracinesca had been sitting by the table, talking, but both had risen and come forward as soon as the pair appeared outside the glass door. It all passed off very satisfactorily, and the Mother Superior gave a little sigh of relief when the churchman and the soldier went away together, leaving her and Sister Giovanna standing in the hall. She felt that Monsignor Saracinesca had been right, after all, in approving the meeting, and that she had been mistaken in thinking that it must endanger the nun's peace.

She said nothing, but she was quietly pleased, and a rare, sweet smile softened her marble features. She asked no questions about what had passed, being quite sure that all was well, and that if there had ever been anything to fear, it was gone.

The prelate and Giovanni walked along the quiet street in silence for some distance; then Severi stopped suddenly, as many Italians do when they are going to say something important.

'You will help me, I am sure,' he said, speaking impetuously from the first. 'Though I never knew you well in old times, I always felt that you were friendly. You will not allow her to ruin both our lives, will you?'

'What sort of help do you want from me?' asked the tall churchman, bending his eyes to the energetic young face.

'The simplest thing in the world!' Giovanni answered. 'We were engaged to be married when I left with that ill-fated expedition. She thought me dead. She must be released from her vows at once! That is all.'

'It is out of the question,' answered Monsignor Saracinesca, with supernal calm.

'Out of the question?' Giovanni frowned angrily. 'Do you mean that it cannot be done? But it is only common justice! She is as much my wife as if you had married us and I had left her at the altar to go to Africa! You cannot be in earnest!'

'I am. In the first place, there is no ground for granting a dispensation.'

'No ground?' cried Severi indignantly. 'We loved each other, we meant to marry! Is that no reason?'

'No. You were not even formally betrothed, either before your parish priest or the mayor. Without a solemn promise in the proper form and before witnesses, there is no binding engagement to marry. That is not only canonical law, but Italian common law, too.'

'We had told each other,' Giovanni objected. 'That was enough.'

'You are wrong,' answered Monsignor Saracinesca gently. 'The Church will do nothing that the law would not do, and the law would not release Sister Giovanna, or any one else, from a legal obligation taken under the same circumstances as the religious one she has assumed.'

'What do you mean?'

'This. If, instead of becoming a nun, Angela had married another man after you were lost, Italian law would not annul the marriage in order that she might become your wife.'

'Of course not!'

'Then why should the Church annul an obligation which is quite as solemn as marriage?'

Giovanni thought he had caught the churchman in a fallacy.

'I beg your pardon,' he replied. 'I was taught as a boy that marriage is a sacrament, but I never heard that taking the veil was one!'

'Quite right, in principle. In reality, it is considered, for women, the equivalent of ordination, and therefore as being of the nature of a sacrament.'

'I am not a theologian, to discuss equivalents,' retorted Giovanni roughly.

'Very true, but a man who knows nothing of mathematics may safely accept the statement of a mathematician about a simple problem. That is not the point, however. If you remember, I said that "under the same circumstances" the Church would not do what the law would not. The Church considers a nun's final vows to be as binding under its regulations as the law considers that any civil contract is. The "circumstances" are therefore exactly similar.'

Giovanni was no match for his cool antagonist in an argument. He cut the discussion short by a direct question.

'Is it in the Pope's power to release Sister Giovanna from her vows, or not?'

'Yes. It is—in principle.'

'Then put your principles into practice and make him do it!' cried the soldier rudely.

Monsignor Saracinesca was unmoved by this attack, which he answered with calm dignity.

'My dear Captain,' he said, 'in the first place, no one can "make" the Pope do things. That is not a respectful way of speaking.'

Giovanni was naturally courteous and he felt that he had gone too far.

'I beg your pardon,' he answered. 'I mean no disrespect to the Pope, though I tell you frankly that I do not believe in much, and not at all in his authority. What I ask is common justice and your help as a friend. I ask you to go to him and lay the case before him fairly, as before a just man, which I heartily believe him to be. You will see that he will do what you admit is in his power and give Sister Giovanna her dispensation.'

'If you and she had been married before your disappearance,' argued the churchman, 'His Holiness would assuredly not refuse. If you had been solemnly betrothed before your parish priest as well as legally promised in marriage at the Capitol, he might make an exception, though a civil betrothal is valid only for six months, under Italian law. But there was no marriage and no such engagement.'

Giovanni found himself led into argument again.

'We had intended to bind ourselves formally,' he objected. 'I have heard it said by priests that everything depends on the intention and that without it the most solemn sacrament is an empty show! Will you doubt our intention if I give you my word that it was mine, and if Sister Giovanna assures you that it was hers?'

'Certainly not! The Pope would not doubt you either, I am sure.'

'Then, in the name of all that is just and right, what is the obstacle? If you admit that the intention is the one important point, and that it existed, what ground have you left?'

'That is begging the question, Captain. It is true that without the intention a sacrament is an empty show, but the intention without the sacrament is of no more value than intention without performance would be in law. Less, perhaps. There is another point, however, which you have quite overlooked. If a request for a dispensation were even to be considered, it ought to come from Sister Giovanna herself.'

'And you will never allow her to ask for her freedom!' cried Giovanni angrily. 'That settles it, I suppose! Oh, the tyranny of the Church!'

Monsignor Saracinesca's calm was not in the least disturbed by this outbreak, and he answered with unruffled dignity.

'That is easily said, Captain. You have just been speaking with Sister Giovanna and I daresay you talked of this. What was her answer?'

'She is under the influence of her surroundings, of course! What could I expect?'

But the churchman had a right to a more direct reply.

'Did she refuse to listen to your suggestion that she should leave her order?' he asked.

Giovanni did not like to admit the fact, and paused a moment before answering; but he was too truthful to quibble.

'Yes, she did.'

'What reason did she give for refusing?'

'None!'

'Did she merely say, "No, I will not"?'

'You are cross-examining me!' Giovanni fancied that he had a right to be offended.

'No,' protested Monsignor Saracinesca, 'or at least not with the intention of catching you in your own words. You made an unfair assertion; I have a right to ask a fair question. If I were not a priest, but simply Ippolito Saracinesca, and if you accused me or my family of unjust dealings, you would be glad to give me an opportunity of defending my position, as man to man. But because I am a priest you deny me that right. Are you just?'

'I did not accuse you personally,' argued the younger man. 'I meant that the Church would never allow Sister Giovanna to ask for her freedom.'

'The greater includes the less,' replied the other. 'The Church is my family, it includes myself, and I claim the right to defend it against an unjust accusation. Sister Giovanna is as free to ask for a dispensation as you were to resign from the army when you were ordered to join an expedition in which you nearly lost your life.'

'You say so!' Severi was incredulous.

'It is the truth. Sister Giovanna has devoted herself to a cause in which she too may risk her life.'

'The risk a nurse runs nowadays is not great!'

'You are mistaken. If she carries out her intention, she will be exposed to a great danger.'

'What intention?' asked Giovanni, instantly filled with anxiety.

'She has asked permission to join the other Sisters of the order who are going out to Rangoon to nurse the lepers there.'

'Lepers!' Severi's features were convulsed with horror. 'She, nurse lepers! It is not possible! It is certain death.'

'No, it is not certain death, by any means, but you will admit the risk.'

Giovanni was beside himself in an instant.

'She shall not go!' he cried furiously. 'You shall not make her kill herself, make her commit suicide, for your glorification—that what you call your Church may add another martyr to its death-roll! You shall not, I say! Do you hear me?' He grasped the prelate's arm roughly. 'If you must have martyrs, go yourselves! Risk your own lives for your own glory, instead of sacrificing women on your altars—women who should live to be wives and mothers, an honour to mankind!'

'You are utterly unjust——'

'No, I am human, and I will not tolerate your human sacrifice! I am a man, and I will not let the woman I love be sent to a horrible death, to delight your Moloch of a God!'

'Captain Severi, you are raving.'

Giovanni's fiery rage leapt from invective to sarcasm.

'Raving! That is your answer, that is the sum of your churchman's argument! A man who will not let you make a martyr of the woman he adores is raving! Do you find that in Saint Thomas Aquinas, or in Saint Augustine, or in Saint Jerome?' He dropped his voice and suddenly spoke with cold deliberation. 'She shall not go. I swear that I will make it impossible.'

Monsignor Saracinesca shook his head.

'If that is an oath,' he said, 'it is a foolish one. If it is a threat, it is unworthy of you.'

'Take it how you will. It is my last word.'

'May you never regret it,' answered the prelate, lifting his three-cornered hat; for Giovanni was saluting, with the evident intention of leaving him at once.

So they parted.



CHAPTER XV

A carriage came early for Sister Giovanna that evening, and the footman sent in a message by the portress. The patient was worse, he said, and the doctor hoped that the nurse would come as soon as she conveniently could. She came down in less than five minutes, in her wide black cloak, carrying her little black bag in her hand. It was raining heavily and she drew the hood up over her head before she left the threshold, though the servant was holding up a large umbrella.

The portress had asked the usual questions of him as soon as he presented himself, but Sister Giovanna repeated them. Was the carriage from the Villino Barini? It was. To take the nurse who was wanted for Baroness Barini? Yes; the Signora Baronessa was worse, and that was why the carriage had come half-an-hour earlier. The door of the brougham was shut with a sharp snap, the footman sprang to the box with more than an average flunkey's agility, and the nun was driven rapidly away. Knowing that the house she was going to was one of those little modern villas on the slope of the Janiculum which have no arched entrance and often have no particular shelter at the front door, she did not take the trouble to push her hood back, as she would need it again so soon.

In about ten minutes the carriage stopped, the footman jumped down with his open umbrella in his hand, and let her into the house. Before she could ask whether she had better leave her cloak in the hall, the man was leading the way upstairs; it was rather dark, but she felt that the carpet under her feet was thick and soft. She followed lightly, and a moment later she was admitted to a well-lighted room that looked like a man's library; the footman disappeared and shut the door, and the latch made a noise as if the key were being turned; as she supposed such a thing to be out of the question, however, she was ashamed to go and try the lock.

She thought she was in the study of the master of the house and that some one would come for her at once, and she stood still in the middle of the room; setting down her bag on a chair, she pushed the hood back from her head carefully, as nuns do, in order not to discompose the rather complicated arrangement of the veil and head-band.

She had scarcely done this when, as she expected, a door at the end of the room was opened. But it was not a stranger that entered; to her unspeakable amazement, it was Giovanni Severi. In a flash she understood that by some trick she had been brought to his brother's dwelling. She was alone with him and the door was locked on the outside.

She laid one hand on the back of the nearest chair, to steady herself, wondering whether she were not really lying ill in her bed and dreaming in the delirium of a fever. But it was no dream; he was standing before her, looking into her face, and his own was stern and dark as an Arab's. When he spoke at last, his voice was low and determined.

'Yes. You are in my house.'

Her tongue was loosed, with a cry of indignation.

'If you are not a madman, let me go!'

'I am not mad.'

His eyes terrified her, and she backed away from him towards the locked door. She almost shrieked for fear.

'If you have a spark of human feeling, let me out!'

'I am human,' he answered grimly, but he did not move to follow her.

'By whatever you hold sacred, let me go!' She was wrenching at the lock in despair with both hands, but sideways, while she kept her eyes on his.

'I hold you sacred—nothing else.'

'Sacred!' Her anger began to outbrave her terror now. 'Sacred, and you have trapped me by a vile trick!'

'Yes,' he answered, 'I admit that.'

He had not moved again and there was a window near her. She sprang to it and thrust the curtains aside, hoping to open the frame before he could stop her. But though she moved the fastenings easily, she could do no more, with all her strength, and Giovanni still stood motionless, watching her.

'You cannot open that window,' he said quietly. 'If you scream, no one will hear you. Do you think I would have brought you to a place where you could get help merely by crying out for it? The risk was too great. I have made sure of being alone with you as long as I choose.'

The nun drew herself up against the red curtains.

'I did not know that you were a coward,' she said.

'I am what you have made me, brave, cowardly, desperate—anything you choose to call it! But such as I am, you must hear me to the end this time, for you have no choice.'

Sister Giovanna understood that there was no escape and she stood quite still; but he saw that her lips moved a little.

'God is not here,' he said, in a hard voice, for he knew that she was praying.

'God is here,' she answered, crossing her hands on her breast.

He came a step nearer and leaned on the back of a chair; he was evidently controlling himself, for his movements were studiedly deliberate, though his voice was beginning to shake ominously.

'If God is with you, Angela, then He shall hear that I love you and that you are mine, not His! He shall listen while I tell you that I will not give you up to be murdered by priests for His glory! Do what He will, He shall not have you. I defy Him!'

The nun shrank against the curtain, not from the man, but at the words.

'At least, do not blaspheme!'

'I must, if it is blasphemy to love you.'

'Yours is not love. Would to heaven it were, as I thought it was to-day. Love is gentle, generous, tender——'

'Then be all three to me; for you love me, in spite of everything!'

'You have taught me to forget that I ever did,' she answered.

'Learn to remember that you did, to realise that you do, and forget only that I have used a trick to bring you here—a harmless trick, one carriage for another, my brother's orderly for a servant. I found out from Madame Bernard where you were going and I sent for you before the hour. You are as safe here as if you were praying in your chapel; in a few minutes the carriage will take you back, you will say you got into the wrong one by mistake, which is quite true, and the right one will take you where you are to go; you will be scarcely half-an-hour late and no one will ever know anything more about it.'

Sister Giovanna had listened patiently to his explanation, and believed what he said. He had always been impulsive to rashness, but now that her first surprise had subsided she was less afraid. He had evidently yielded to a strong temptation with the idea of forcing her to listen to him, and in reality, if she had understood herself, she was not able to believe that he would hurt her or bring any disgrace upon her.

'If you are in earnest,' she said, when he had finished, 'then let me go at once.'

'Presently,' he answered. 'This afternoon you made me promise to hear quietly what you had to say, and I did my best. I could not help your being frightened just now, I suppose—after all, I have carried you off from the door of your Convent, and I meant you to understand that you were helpless, and must listen. I ought to have put it differently, but I am not clever at such things. All I ask is that you will hear me. After all, that is what you asked of me to-day.'

He had begun to walk up and down before her, while he was speaking; but he did not come near her, for the chair stood between her and the line along which he was pacing backwards and forwards. Something in his way of speaking reassured her, as he jerked out the rather disconnected sentences. Women often make the mistake of thinking that when we men begin to stumble away from the straight chalk-line of that logic in which we are supposed by them to take such pride, our purpose is wavering, whereas the opposite is often the case. Men capable of sudden, direct, and strong action are often poor talkers, particularly when they are just going to spring or strike. A little hesitation is more often the sign of a near outbreak than of any inward weakening. But Sister Giovanna was deceived.

'I shall be forced to listen, if you insist,' she said, moving half a step forward from the curtain, 'but how can I trust you, while I am your prisoner?'

'You can trust me, if you will be generous,' Giovanni answered.

'I do not know what you mean by the word,' replied the nun cautiously. 'If I am not generous, as you mean it, what then?'

Severi stopped in his walk; his face began to darken again, and his voice was rough and hard.

'What then? Why then, remember what I am and where you are!'

Sister Giovanna drew back again.

'I would rather trust in God than trust you when you speak in that tone,' she said.

He had used the very words she had spoken in the cloister when he had tried to take her by the arm, but they had a very different meaning now; his dangerous temper was rising again and he was threatening her. Yet her answer produced an effect she was far from expecting. He turned to the writing-table near him, opened one of the drawers and took out an army revolver. Sister Giovanna watched him. If he was only going to kill her she was not afraid.

'I will force you to trust me,' he said, quickly examining the charge as he came towards her.

'By threatening me with that thing?' she asked with contempt. 'You are mistaken!'

He was close to her, but he offered her the butt-end of the weapon.

'No,' he said, 'I am not mistaken. It is I who fear death, as long as you are alive, and here it is, in your hand.' But she would not take the revolver from him. 'You will not take it? Well, there it is.' He laid it on the chair, which he placed beside her. 'If I come too near you, or try to touch even your sleeve, you can use it. The law will acquit you, and even praise you for defending yourself in need.'

'There must be no need,' she answered, looking at him fixedly. 'Say quickly what you have to say.'

'Will you not sit down, then?'

'No, thank you. I would rather not.'

It would have seemed like consenting to be where she was; and besides, the revolver lay on the nearest available chair and she would not touch it, much less hold it in her hand, if she sat down to listen. Giovanni leaned back against the heavy table at some distance from her, resting his hands on the edge, on each side of him.

'After I left you to-day,' he began, 'I had a long talk with Monsignor Saracinesca in the street. I asked him questions about obtaining a dispensation for you. He made it look impossible, of course—that was to be expected! But I got one point from him, which is important. He made it quite clear to me that the request to be released from your vows must come from you, if it is to be considered at all. You understand that, do you not?'

'Is it possible that you yourself do not yet understand?' Sister Giovanna asked, as quietly as she could. 'Did I not tell you to-day that no power could loose me from my vows?'

'You were mistaken. There is a power that can, and that rests with the Pope, and he shall exercise it.'

'I will not ask for a dispensation. I have told you that it is an impossibility——'

'There is no such thing as impossibility for men and women who love,' Giovanni answered. 'Have you forgotten the last words you said to me before I sailed for Africa?' He spoke gently now, and Sister Giovanna turned her face from him. 'You said, "I will wait for you for ever." Do you remember?'

'Yes. I remember.'

'Did you "wait for ever," Angela?'

She looked at him again, and then came forward a little, drawn by an impulse she could not resist.

'Did I love another man, that you reproach me?' she asked. 'Such as my life has been, have I lived it as a woman lives who has forgotten? I know I have not. Yes, Giovanni, I have waited, but as one waits who hopes to meet in heaven the dear one who is dead on earth. Do you still find fault with me? Would you rather have had me go back to the world and to society after mourning you as long as a girl of nineteen could mourn for a man to whom she had not been openly engaged? Was I wrong? If you had really been dead and could have seen me, would you have wished that I were living differently?'

For a moment he was moved and held out one hand towards her, hoping that she would come nearer.

'No,' he answered—'no, dear——'

'But that was the only question,' she said earnestly, 'and you have answered it!'

She would not take his hand and Giovanni dropped his own with a gesture of disappointment.

'No,' he replied, in a colder tone, 'it is not the question, for you have not told me all the truth. If I had not been gone five years, if I had come back the day before you took the last vows, would you have taken them?'

'No, indeed!'

'If I had come the very next day after, would you not have done your best to be set free?'

There was an instant's pause before she spoke; then the answer came, clear and distinct.

'No.'

Severi turned from her with an impatient movement of his compact head, and tapped the carpeted floor with his heel. His answer broke from his lips harshly.

'You never loved me!'

She would have done wisely if she had been silent then; but she could not, for his words denied the truth that had ruled her life.

'Better than I knew,' she said. 'Better than I knew, even then.'

'Even then?' The words had hope in them. 'And now?' He was suddenly breathless.

'Yes, even now!' The tide of truth lifted her from her feet and swept her onward, helpless. 'Giovanni! Giovanni! Do you think it costs me nothing to keep my word with God?'

But he had been disappointed too often now, and he could not believe at once.

'It costs you less than it would to keep your faith with me,' he answered.

'It is not true! Indeed, it is not true!'

'Then let the truth win, dear! All the rest is fable!'

He was at her side now. She had tried to resist, but not long, and her hand was in his, though her face was turned away.

'No—no——' she faltered, but he would not let her speak.

'All a fable of sorrow and a dream of parting, sweetheart! And now we have waked to meet again, your hand in my hand, my heart to your heart—your lips to mine——'

She almost shrieked aloud in terror then and threw herself back bodily, as from the edge of a precipice. She might have fallen if he had not still held her hand, and as she recovered herself she tried to withdraw it. In her distress, words came that she regretted afterwards.

'Do you think that only you are human, of us two?' she cried, in passionate protest against passion itself, against him, against life, but still twisting her wrist in his grip and trying to wrench it away. 'For the love of heaven, Giovanni——'

'No—for love of me——'

She broke from him, for when he felt that he was hurting her his fingers relaxed. But she could not stay her own words.

'Yes, I love you,' she cried almost fiercely, as she stepped backwards. 'Right or wrong, I cannot unmake myself, and as for lying to you, I will not! God is my witness that I mean to love you living as I have loved you dead, without one thought of earth or one regret for what might have been! But, oh, may God forgive me, too, if I wish that we were side by side in one grave, at peace for ever!'

'Dead? Why? With life before us——'

'No!' She interrupted him with rising energy. 'No, Giovanni, no! I was weak for a moment, but I am strong again. I can wait for you, and you will find strength to wait for me. You are so brave, Giovanni, you can be so generous, when you will! You will wait, too!'

'For what?'

'For the end that will be the beginning, for God's great To-morrow, when you will come to be with me for ever and ever, beyond the world, and all parting and all pain!'

There was a deep appeal to higher things in her words and in her voice, too, but it did not touch him; he only knew that at the very moment when she had seemed to be near yielding, the terrible conviction of her soul had come once more between him and her.

'There is no beyond,' he answered, chilled and sullen again. 'You live in a lying legend; your life is a fable and your sacrifice is a crime.'

The cruel words struck her tormented heart, as icy hailstones bruise the half-clad body of a starving child, out in the storm.

'You hurt me very much,' she said in a low voice.

'Forgive me!' he cried quickly. 'I did not mean to. I forget that you believe your dreams, for I cannot live in visions as you do. I only see a blind force, striking in the dark, a great injustice done to us both—a wrong I will undo, come what may!'

'You know my answer to that. You can undo nothing.'

'I am not answered yet. You say you love me—prove it!'

'Only my life can,' said the nun; 'only our two lives can prove our love, for we can live for each other still, perhaps we shall be allowed to die for each other, and in each other we shall find strength to resist——'

'Not to resist love itself, Angela.'

'No, not to resist all that is good and true in love.'

'I cannot see what you see,' he answered. 'Nothing human is beyond my comprehension, good or bad, but you cannot make a monk of me, still less a saint—a Saint Louis of Gonzaga, who was too modest to look his own mother in the face!'

He laughed roughly, but checked himself at once, fearing to hurt her again.

She turned to him with a look of gentle authority.

'In spite of what you have done to-night,' she said, 'you are such a manly man, that you can be the man you will. Listen! If another woman tried to get your love, could you resist her? Would you, for love of me?'

'She would have small chance, you know that well enough.'

'There is another woman in me, Giovanni. Resist her!'

'I do not understand.'

'You must try! There is another woman in me, or what is left of her, and she is quite different from my real self. Resist her for my sake, as I am fighting her with all my strength. It was she who tempted you to bring me here by a trick you are ashamed of already; it was she that made me weak, just now; but she is not the woman you love, she is not Angela, she is not worthy of you; and as for me, I hate her, with all my soul!'

Severi had said truly that he could not understand, and instead of responding to her appeal, he turned impatient again.

'You choose your words well enough,' he answered, 'but women's fine speeches persuade women, not men. No man was ever really moved to change his mind by a woman's eloquence, though we will risk our lives for a look of yours, for a touch—for a kiss!'

Sister Giovanna sighed and turned from him. The razor-edge of extremest peril was passed, for the words that left him cold and unbelieving had brought back conviction to her soul. She could live for him, pray for him, die for him, but she would not sin for him nor lift a hand to loose the vows that bound her to the religious life. Yet she did not see that she was slowly driving him to a state of temper in which he might break all barriers. Very good women rarely understand men well until it is too late, because men very rarely make any appeal to what is good in woman, whereas they lie in wait for all her weaknesses. It is almost a proverbial truth that men of the most lawless nature, if not actually of the worst character, are often loved by saintly women, perhaps because the true saint sees some good in every one and believes that those who have least of it are the ones who need help most. Sister Giovanna was not a saint yet, but she was winning her way as she gained ground in the struggle that had been forced upon her that night, so cruelly against her will, and having got the better of a temptation, her charity made her think that Giovanni Severi was farther from it than he was. Outward danger was near at hand, just when inward peril was passed.

As if he were weary of the contest of words, he left the writing-table, sat down in a big chair farther away, and stared at the pattern in the carpet.

'You are forcing me to extremities,' he said, after a long pause, and rather slowly. 'Unless you consent to appeal to the Pope for your freedom, I will not let you leave this house. You are in my power here, and here you shall stay.'

She was more surprised and offended than indignant at what she took for an empty threat, and she was not at all frightened. Women never are, when one expects them to be. She drew her long cloak round her with simple dignity, crossed the room without haste, and stopped before the locked door, turning her head to speak to him.

'It is time for me to go,' she said gravely. 'Open the door at once, please.'

She could not believe that he would refuse to obey her, but he did not move; he did not even look up, as he answered:

'If I keep you a prisoner, there will be a search for you. You may stay here a day, a week, or a month, but in the end you will be found here, in my rooms.'

'And set free,' the nun answered, from the door, with some contempt.

'Not as you think. You will be expelled from your order for scandalous behaviour in having spent a night, or a week, or a month in an officer's lodging. What will you do then?'

'If such a thing were possible, I would tell the truth and I should be believed.' But her anger was already awake.

'The thing is very possible,' Giovanni answered, 'and no one will believe you. It will be out of the question for you to go back to your Convent, even for an hour. Even if the Mother Superior were willing, it could not be done. In the Middle Ages, you would have been sent to a prison for penitents for the rest of your life; nowadays you will simply be turned out of your order with public disgrace, the papers will be full of your story, your aunt will make Rome ring with it——'

'What do you mean by all this?' cried the Sister, breaking out at last. 'Are you trying to frighten me?'

'No. I wish you to know that I will let nothing stand between you and me—nothing, absolutely nothing.' He repeated the word with cold energy. 'When it is known that you have been here for twenty-four hours, you will be forced to marry me. Nothing else can save you from infamy. Even Madame Bernard will not dare to give you shelter, for she will lose every pupil she has if it is found out that she is harbouring a nun who has broken her vows, a vulgar bad character who has been caught in an officer's lodgings! That is what they will call you!'

At first she had not believed that he was in earnest, but she could not long mistake the tone of a man determined to risk much more than life and limb for his desperate purpose. Her just anger leaped up like a flame.

'Are you an utter scoundrel, after all? Have you no honour left? Is there nothing in you to which a woman can appeal? You talk of being human! You prate of your man's nature! And in the same breath you threaten an innocent girl with public infamy, if she will not disgrace herself of her own free will! Is that your love? Did I give you mine for that? Shame on you! And shame on me for being so deceived!'

Her voice rang like steel and the thrusts of her deadly reproach pierced deep. He was on his feet, in the impulse of self-defence, before she had half done, trying to silence her—he was at her side, calling her by her name, but she would not hear him.

'No, I believed in you!' she went on. 'I trusted you! I loved you—but I have loved a villain and believed a liar, and I am a prisoner under a coward's roof!' Beseeching, he tried to lay his hand upon her sleeve; she mistook his meaning. 'Take care!' she cried, and suddenly the revolver was in her hand. 'Take care, I say! A nun is only a woman after all!'

He threw himself in front of her in an instant, his arms wide out, and as the muzzle came close against his chest, he gave the familiar word of command in a loud, clear tone:

'Fire!'

Their eyes met, and they were both mad.

'If you despise me for loving you beyond honour and disgrace, then fire, for I would rather die by your hand than live without you! I am ready! Pull the trigger! Let the end be here, this instant!'

He believed that she would do it, and for one awful moment she had felt that she was going to kill him. Then she lowered the weapon and laid it on the chair beside her with slow deliberation, though her hands shook so much that she almost dropped it. As if no longer seeing him, she turned to the door, folded her hands on the panel, and leaned her forehead against them.

He heard her voice, low and trembling:

'Forgive us our sins, as we forgive them that trespass against us!'

His own hand was on the revolver to do what she had refused to do. As when the cyclone whirls on itself, just beyond the still storm-centre, and strikes all aback the vessel it has driven before it for hours, so the man's passion had turned to destroy him. But the holy words stayed his hand.

'Angela! Forgive me!' he cried in agony.

The nun heard him, raised her head and turned; his suffering was visible and appalling to see. But she found speech to soothe it.

'You did not know what you were saying.'

'I know what I said.'

He could hardly speak.

'You did not mean to say it, when you brought me here.' She was prompting him gently.

'No.' He almost whispered the one word, and then he regretted it. 'I hardly know what I meant to say,' he went on more firmly, 'but I know what I meant to accomplish. That is the truth, such as it is. I saw this afternoon that I should never persuade you to ask for your freedom unless I could talk to you alone where you must hear me; the chance came unexpectedly and I took it, for it would never have come again. I had no other place, I had not thought of what I should say, but I was ready to risk everything, all for all—as I have done——'

'You have, indeed,' the nun said slowly, while he hesitated.

'And I have failed. Forgive me if you can. It was for love of you and for your sake.'

'For my sake, you should be true and brave and kind,' answered the Sister. 'But you ask forgiveness, and I forgive you, and I will try to forget, too. If I cannot do that, I can at least believe that you were mad, for no man in his senses would think of doing what you threatened! If you wish to live so that I may tell God in my prayers that I would have been your wife if I could, and that I hope to meet you in heaven—then, for my sake, be a man, and not a weakling willing to stoop to the most contemptible villainy to cheat a woman. Your brother was nearly killed in doing his duty here and you have taken his place. Make it your true calling, as I have made it mine to nurse the sick. At any moment, either of us may be called to face danger, till we die; we can feel that we are living the same life, for the same hope. Is that nothing?'

'The same life? A nun and a soldier?'

'Why not, if we risk it that others may be safe?'

'And in the same hope? Ah no, Angela! That is where it all breaks down!'

'No. You will live to believe it is there that all begins. Now let me go.'

Severi shook his head sadly; she was so unapproachably good, he thought—what chance had a mere man like himself of really understanding her splendid, saintly delusion?

Pica had turned the key on the outside and had taken it out, obeying his orders; but Giovanni had another like it in his pocket and now unlocked and opened the door. The nun went out, drawing her black hood quite over her head so that it concealed her face, and Giovanni followed her downstairs and held an umbrella over her while she got into the carriage, for it was still raining.

'Good-night,' he said, as Pica shut the door.

He did not hear her answer and the brougham drove away. When he could no longer see the lights, he went upstairs again, and after he had shut the door he stood a long time just where she had stood last. The revolver was still on the chair under the bright electric light. He fancied that the peculiar faint odour of her heavy cloth cloak, just damped by the few drops of rain that had reached it, still hung in the air. With the slightest effort of memory, her voice came back to his ears, now gentle, now gravely reproachful, but at last ringing like steel on steel in her generous anger. She had been present, in that room, in his power, during more than twenty minutes, and now she was gone and would never come again.

He had done the most rash, inconsequent, and uselessly bad deed that had ever suggested itself to his imagination, and now that all was over he wondered how he could have been at once so foolish, so brutal, and so daring. Perhaps five years of slavery in Africa had unsettled his mind; he had heard of several similar cases and his own might be another; he had read of officers who had lost all sense of responsibility after months of fighting in the tropics, perhaps from having borne responsibility too long and unshared, who had come back, after doing brave and honourable work, to find themselves morally crippled for civilised life, and no longer able to distinguish right from wrong or truth from falsehood.

It had all happened quickly but illogically, as events follow each other in dreams, from the moment when he had gone to the Convent hospital with Monsignor Saracinesca till the brougham drove away in the dark, taking Angela back. He understood for the first time how men whom every one supposed to be of average uprightness could commit atrocious crimes; he shuddered to think what must have happened if a mere chance had not changed his mood, making him ask Angela's forgiveness and prompting him to let her go. She had touched him, that was all. If her voice had sounded only a little differently at the great moment, if her eyes had not looked at him with just that expression, if her attitude had been a shade less resolute, what might not have happened? For the conviction that he could force her to be his wife if he chose to keep her a prisoner had taken possession of him suddenly, when all his arguments had failed. It had come with irresistible strength: the simplicity of the plan had been axiomatic, its immediate execution had been in his power, and while she was within the circle of his senses, his passion had been elemental and overwhelming. He tried to excuse himself with that; men in such cases had done worse things by far, and at least Angela had been safe from violence.

But his own words accused him; he had threatened her, he had talked of bringing infamy and public disgrace on the woman he loved, in order to force her to marry him; he had thought only of that end and not at all of the vile means; it all took shape now, and looked ugly enough. He felt the blood surging to his sunburnt forehead for shame, perhaps for the first time in his life, and the sensation was painfully humiliating.

It made a deep impression on him when he realised it. Often enough he had said that honour was his god, and he had taken pleasure in proving that he who makes the rule of honour the law of his life must of necessity be a good man, incapable of any falsehood or meanness or cruelty, and therefore truthful, generous, and kind; in other words, such an one must really be all that a good Christian aims at being. The religion of honour, Giovanni used to say, was of a higher nature than Christianity, since Christians might sin, repent, and be forgiven again and again, to the biblical seventy times seven times; but a man who did one dishonourable deed in his whole life ceased to be a man of honour for ever. Having that certainty before his eyes, how could he ever be in danger of a fall?

But now he was ashamed, for he had fallen; he had forsaken his deity and his faith; the infamy he had threatened to bring on Angela had come back upon him and branded him. It was not because he had brought her to his lodging to talk with him alone, for he saw nothing dishonourable in that, since he felt sure that no harm could come to her in consequence. The dishonour lay in having thought of the rest afterwards, and in having been on the point of carrying out his threat. If he had kept her a prisoner only a few hours, the whole train of results would most probably have followed; if he had not let her go till the next day, they would have been inevitable and irretrievable. Nothing could have saved Sister Giovanna then.

As he saw the truth more and more clearly, shame turned into something more like horror, and as different from mere humiliation as remorse is from repentance. Thinking over what he had done, he attempted to put himself in Angela's place, and to see, or guess, how he would behave if some stronger being tried to force him to choose between public ignominy and breaking a solemn oath. Moreover, he endeavoured to imagine what the nun, as distinguished from the mere woman, must have felt when she found herself trapped in a man's rooms and locked in. Even his unbelief instinctively placed Sister Giovanna higher in the scale of goodness than Angela Chiaromonte; he was an unbeliever, but not a scoffer, for somehow the rule of honour influenced him there, too. Nuns could really be saints, and were often holy women, and the fact that they were mistaken, in his opinion, only made their sacrifice more complete, since they were to receive no reward where they hoped for an eternal one; and he no longer doubted that Sister Giovanna was as truly good in every sense as any of them. What must she not have felt, less than an hour ago, when he had entered the room, telling her roughly that she was in his power, beyond all reach of help? Yet he had cherished the illusion that he was an honourable man, who would never take cruel advantage of any woman, still less of an innocent girl, far less, still, of a nursing nun, whose dress alone would have protected her from insult amongst any men but criminals.

In his self-contempt he hung his head as he sat alone by the table, half-fancying that if he raised his eyes he would see his own image accusing him. Sister Giovanna herself would have been surprised if she could have known how complete her victory had been. His god had forsaken him in his great need, and though he could not believe in hers, he was asking himself what inward strength that must be which could make a woman in extremest danger so gentle and yet so strong, so quick to righteous anger and yet so ready to forgive what he could never pardon in himself.



CHAPTER XVI

Sister Giovanna's nerves were good. The modern trained nurse is a machine, and a wonderfully good one on the whole; when she is exceptionally endowed for her work she is quite beyond praise. People who still fancy that Rome is a mediaeval town, several centuries behind other great capitals in the application of useful discoveries and scientific systems, would be surprised if they knew the truth and could see what is done there, and not as an exception, but as the general rule. The common English and American belief, that Roman nuns nurse the sick chiefly by prayer and the precepts of the school of Salerno, is old-fashioned nonsense; the Pope's own authority requires that they should attend an extremely modern training-school where they receive a long course of instruction, probably as good as any in the world, from eminent surgeons and physicians.

One of the first results of proper training in anything is an increased steadiness of the nerves, which quite naturally brings with it the ability to bear a long strain better than ordinary persons can, and a certain habitual coolness that is like an armour against surprises of all kinds. One reason why Anglo-Saxons are generally cooler than people of other nations is that they are usually in better physical condition than other men.

A digression is always a liberty which the story-teller takes with his readers, and those of us have the fewest readers who make the most digressions; hence the little old-fashioned civility of apologising for them. The one I have just made seemed necessary to explain why Sister Giovanna was able to go to her patient directly from Severi's rooms, and to take up her work with as much quiet efficiency as if nothing unusual had happened.

She had found the portress in considerable perturbation, for the right carriage had just arrived, a quarter of an hour late instead of half-an-hour too soon. Sister Giovanna said that there had been a mistake, that she had been taken to the wrong house, that the first carriage should not have come to the hospital of the White Nuns at all, and that she had been kept waiting some time before being brought back. All this was strictly true, and without further words she drove away to the Villino Barini, the brougham Severi had hired having already disappeared. As he had foreseen, it was impossible that any one should suspect what had happened, for the nun was above suspicion, and when his carriage had once left the Convent door no one could ever trace the sham coachman and footman in order to question them. In that direction, therefore, there was nothing to fear. The authority of an Italian officer over his orderly is great, and his power of making the conscript's life singularly easy or perfectly unbearable is greater. Even Sister Giovanna knew that, and she felt no anxiety about the future.

Her mind was the more free to serve her conscience in examining her own conduct. It was not her right to analyse Giovanni's, however; he had made the circumstances in which she had been placed against her will, and the only question was, whether she had done right in a position she could neither have foreseen, so as to avoid it, nor have escaped from when once caught in it.

Examinations of conscience are tedious to every one except the subject of them, who generally finds them disagreeable, and sometimes positively painful. Sister Giovanna was honest with herself and was broad-minded enough to be fair; her memory had always been very good, she could recall nearly every word of the long interview, and she accused herself of having been weak twice, namely, when she had admitted that she was tempted, and when she had raised the revolver and Giovanni had thrown himself against it. The danger had been great at that moment, she knew, for she had felt that her mind was losing its balance. But she had not wished to kill him, even for a moment, though a terrifying conviction that her finger was going to pull the trigger in spite of her had taken away her breath. Looking back, she thought it must have been the sensation some people have at the edge of a precipice, when they feel an insane impulse to jump off, without having the slightest wish to destroy themselves. If a man affected in this way should lose his head and leap to destruction, his act would assuredly not be suicide. The nun knew it very well, and she was equally sure that if she had been startled into pulling the trigger, and had killed the man she had loved so well, it would not have been homicide, whatever the law might have called it. But the consequences would have been frightful, and the danger had been real. She could be thankful for her good nerves, since nothing had happened, that was all. Where she had done wrong had been in taking up the weapon, great as the provocation to self-defence had been.

Morally speaking, and apart from the possible fatal result, her main fault lay in having confessed to Giovanni that she was really tempted to ask release from her vows. Now that he was not near, no such temptation assailed her, but there had been a time when to resist it had seemed the greatest sacrifice that any human being could make. She could only draw one conclusion from this fact, but it was a grave one: in spite of her past life, her vows and her heartfelt faith, she was not free from material and earthly passion. Innocence is one thing, ignorance is another, and a trained nurse of twenty-five cannot and should not be as ignorant as a child, whether she be a nun or a lay woman. Sister Giovanna knew what she had felt: it had been the thrill of an awakened sense, not the vibration of a heartfelt sympathy; it belonged neither to the immortal spirit nor to the kingdom of the mind, but to the dying body. Temptation is not sin, but it is wrong to expose oneself to it willingly, except for a purpose so high as to justify the risk. Sister Giovanna quietly resolved that she would never see Severi again, and she judged that the surest way of abiding by her resolution was to join the mission to the Far East and leave Italy for ever. Having already thought of taking the step merely in order to get away from the possibility of hating a person who had wronged her and robbed her, it seemed indeed her duty to take it now for this much stronger reason. Since she could still be weak, her first and greatest duty was to put herself beyond the reach of weakening influences. Giovanni would not leave Rome while she stayed there, that was certain; there was no alternative but to go away herself, for a man capable of such a daring and lawless deed as carrying her off from the door of the Convent, under the very eyes of the portress, might do anything. Indeed, he might even follow her to Rangoon; but she must risk that, or bury herself in a cloister, which she would not do if she could help it.

While she was nursing the new case to which she had been called, her resolution became irrevocable. When the patient finally recovered she returned to the Convent, and it was not till she had been doing ordinary work in the hospital during several days that she asked to see the Mother Superior alone. Captain Ugo Severi had gone to the baths of Montecatini to complete his cure, nothing more had been heard of Giovanni, and the Mother was inclined to believe that his meeting with Sister Giovanna had been final, and that he would make no further attempt to see her. But the nun herself thought otherwise.

She sat where she always did when she came to the Mother Superior's room, on a straight-backed chair between the corner of the table and the wall, and she told her story without once faltering or hesitating, though without once looking up, from the moment when she had got into the wrong carriage till she had at last reached the Villino Barini in safety. Though it was late in the afternoon and the light was failing, the Mother shaded her eyes with one hand while she listened.

There was neither rule nor tradition under which Sister Giovanna could have felt it her duty to tell her superior what had happened, and she had necessarily been the only judge of what her confessor should know of the matter. Even now, if she had burst into floods of tears or shown any other signs of being on the verge of a nervous crisis, the elder woman would probably have stopped her and told her not to make confidences that concerned another person until she was calmer. But she evidently had full control of her words and outward bearing, and the Mother listened in silence. Then the young nun expounded the conclusion to which she believed herself forced: she must leave a country in which Giovanni might at any moment make another meeting inevitable, and the safest refuge was the Rangoon Leper Asylum. She formally asked permission to be allowed to join the mission.

The Mother Superior's nervous little hand contracted spasmodically upon her eyes, and then joined its fellow on her knee. She sat quite still for a few seconds, looking towards the window; the evening glow was beginning to fill the garden and the cloisters with purple and gold, and a faint reflection came up to her suffering face.

'It kills me to let you go,' she said at last, just above a whisper.

The words and the tone took Sister Giovanna by surprise, though she had lately understood that the Mother Superior's affection for her was much stronger than she would formerly have believed possible; it was something more than the sincere friendship which a middle-aged woman might feel for one much younger, and it was certainly not founded on the fact that the latter was an exceptionally gifted nurse, whose presence and activity were of the highest importance to the hospital. Neither friendship nor admiration for a fellow-worker could explain an emotion of such tragic depth and strength that it seemed almost too human in a woman otherwise quite above and beyond ordinary humanity. Sister Giovanna could find nothing to say, and waited in silence.

'I did not know that one could feel such pain,' said Mother Veronica, looking steadily out of the window; but her voice was little more than a breath.

The Sister could not understand, but in the midst of her own great trouble, the sight of a suffering as great as her own, and borne on account of her, moved her deeply.

All at once the Mother Superior swayed to one side on her chair, as if she were fainting, and she might have fallen if the nun had not darted forward to hold her upright; but at the touch, she straightened herself with an effort and gently pushed the young Sister away from her.

'If it is for me that you are in such pain, Mother,' said Sister Giovanna gently, 'I cannot thank you enough for being so sorry! But I do not deserve that you should care so much—indeed, I do not!'

'If I could give my life for yours, it would still be too little!'

'You are giving your life for many,' Sister Giovanna answered gently. 'That is better.'

'No. It is not better, but it is the best I can do. You do not understand.'

'How can I? But I am grateful——'

'You owe me nothing,' the Mother Superior answered with sudden energy, 'but I owe you everything. You have given me the happiest hours of my life. But it was too much. God sent you to me, and God is taking you away from me—God's will be done!'

Sister Giovanna felt that she was near something very strange and great which she might not be able to comprehend if it were shown clearly, and which almost frightened her by its mysterious veiled presence. The evening light penetrated Mother Veronica's translucid features, as if they were carved out of alabaster, and the hues that lingered in them might have been reflected from heaven; her upturned eyes, that sometimes looked so small and piercing, were wide and sorrowful now. The young Sister saw, but guessed nothing of the truth.

'The happiest hours in your life!' She repeated the words with wonder.

'Yes,' said the elder woman slowly, 'the happiest by far! Since you have been here, you have never given me one bad moment, by word or deed, excepting by the pain you yourself have had to bear. If you go away, and if I should not live long, remember what I have told you, for if you have some affection for me, it will comfort you to think that you have made me very, very happy for five long years.'

'I am glad, though I have done nothing but my duty, and barely that. I cannot see how I deserve such praise, but if I have satisfied you, I am most glad. You have been a mother to me.'

Slowly the transfigured face turned to her at last, full of radiance.

'Do you mean it just as you say it, my dear?'

'Indeed, indeed, I do!' Sister Giovanna answered, wondering more and more, but in true earnest.

The dark eyes gazed on her steadily for a long time, with an expression she had never seen in human eyes before. Then the truth came, soft and low.

'I am your mother.'

'You are a mother to us all,' the young Sister answered.

'I am your mother, dear, your own mother that bore you—you, my only child. Do you understand?'

Sister Giovanna's eyes opened wide in amazement, but there was a forelightening of joy in her face.

'You?' she cried. 'But I knew my mother—my father——'

'No. She whom you called your mother was my elder sister. I ran away with the man I loved, because he was a Protestant and poor, and my parents would not allow the marriage. We were married in his Church, but my family would have nothing more to do with me. I was an outcast for them, disgraced, never to be mentioned. Your own father died of typhoid fever a few days before you were born. I was ill a long time, ill and poor, almost starving. I wrote to my sister, imploring help. She and her husband bargained with me. They agreed to make a long journey and bring you back as their child. They promised that you should be splendidly provided for; you would be an heiress, all that my brother-in-law could legally dispose of should go to you; but I was to disappear for ever and never let the truth be known. What could I do? You were two months old and I was penniless. I let them take you, and I became a nursing sister. It was like tearing off a limb, but I let you go to the glorious future that was before you. At least, you would have all the world held, to make up for my love, and I knew they would be kind to you. They were ashamed of me, that was all. They said that I was not married! You know how rigid they were, with their traditions and prejudices! That is my story. I have kept my word, and their secret, until to-day.'

Sister Giovanna listened with wide eyes and parted lips, for the world she had lived in during more than five-and-twenty years was wrenched from its path and sent whirling into space at a tangent she could not follow; there was nothing firm under her feet, she had nothing substantial left, not even the name she had once called her own. It had all been unreal. The dead Knight of Malta lying in state in the great palace had not been her father; the delicate woman with the ascetic face, who had died when she had been a little child, had not been her mother; they had never registered her birth at the Municipality because she had not been their child and had not even been born in Rome; they had not taken the proper legal steps to adopt her and make her their heir, because they had been ashamed of her own mother. And her own mother was before her, Mother Veronica, the Superior of the Convent in which she had taken refuge because they had left her a destitute, nameless, penniless waif, after promising to make her their daughter in the eyes of the law. She knew that without a certificate of birth a girl could not easily be legally married in Italy; if the Prince had lived and she had been about to marry, what would he have done about that? But he was gone, and she would not ask herself such a question, for the answer seemed to be that he would have done something dishonest rather than admit the truth. A deep resentment sprang up in her against the dead man and woman who had not honourably kept their solemn promise to her mother, and her aunt's lawless act and hatred of her sank into insignificance beside their sin of omission. If the Princess's confession during her illness had not been altogether the invention of a fevered brain, and if there had really been a will, it had been worthless, and its destruction had not robbed Angela of a farthing. She and her mother had been cheated and their lives made desolate by those other two; she must not think of it, lest she should hate the dead, as she had dreaded to hate the living.

All this had flashed upon her mind in one of those quick visions of the truth by which we sometimes become aware of many closely connected facts simultaneously, without taking account of each. After the Mother Superior had ceased speaking the silence lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed long to her now that she had told her secret and was waiting to be answered. Would her daughter forgive her? The young nun's face expressed nothing she felt at that moment; for the staring eyes and parted lips remained mechanically fixed in a look of blind surprise long after her thoughts were on the wing; and her thoughts flew far, but their wide-circling flight brought them back, like swallows, as swiftly as they had flown away.

Then her heart spoke, and in another moment she was at her mother's knee, like a child, with a little natural cry that had never passed her lips before. For a breathing-space both guessed what heaven might hold of rest, refreshment, and peace, and the march of tragic fate was stayed while mother and daughter communed together, and dreamed of never parting on earth but to meet in heaven, of keeping their sweet secret from all the world as something sacred for themselves, of working side by side, in one life, one love, one faith, one hope, of facing all earthly trouble together, and of fighting every battle of the spirit hand in hand.

Two could bear what one could not. Sister Giovanna felt that fresh strength was given her, and the long-tried elder woman was conscious that her will to do good was renewed and doubled and trebled, so that it could accomplish twice and three times as much as before. Her daughter would not leave her now, to be a martyr in the East, as the only escape from herself and from the man who loved her too daringly. Why should she go? If she still felt that she must leave Rome for a time, she could go to one of the order's houses far away, but not to the East, the deadly East! Heaven did not love useless suffering; the Church condemned all self-sacrifice that was not meet, right, and reasonable. In due time she would come back, when all danger was over, when Giovanni had lived through the first days of surprise, disappointment, and passion.

The sunset glow had faded and twilight was coming on when the two went down the steps and crossed the cloistered garden to the chapel, for it was the hour for Vespers. They walked as usual, with an even, noiseless tread, the young nun on the left of her superior and keeping step with her, but not quite close to her, for that would not have been respectful; yet each felt as if the other's hand were in hers and their hearts were beating gently with the same loving thought. Peace had come upon them and they felt that it would be lasting.

At the chapel door they separated; the Mother Superior passed to her high-backed, carved seat at the end, the three aged nuns who had survived from other times sat next to her in the order of their years, and Sister Giovanna took her appointed place much farther down. A number of seats were empty, belonging to those nurses who were attending private cases.

Cloistered nuns spend many hours of the day and night in chapel, but the working orders use short offices and have much latitude as to the hours at which their services are held. Except on Sundays and at daily mass, no priest officiates; the Mother Superior or Mother Prioress leads with her side of the choir, the Sub-Prioress, or the Mistress of the Novices, or whoever is second in authority, responds with the other nuns. The Office of Saint Dominic for Vespers practically consists of one short Psalm, a very diminutive Lesson, one Hymn, and the beautiful Canticle 'My soul doth magnify the Lord'; then follows a little prayer and the short responsory, and all is over. The whole service does not last ten minutes.

The women's voices answered each other peacefully, and then rose together in the quaint old melody of the hymn, the sweet notes of the younger ones carried high on the stronger tones of the elder Sisters, while the three old nuns droned on in a sort of patient, nasal, half-mannish counter-tenor, scarcely pronouncing the words they sang, but making an accompaniment that was not wholly unpleasing.

Two versicles of responsory next, and then the Mother Superior began to intone the Magnificat, and Sister Giovanna took up the grand plain-chant with the others. In spite of her deep trouble, the words had never meant to her what they meant now, and she felt her world lifted up from earth to the gates of Peace.

But she was not to reach the end of the wonderful song that day.

'And His mercy is on them that fear Him, from generation to generation,' the nuns sang.

With a crash, as if a thunderbolt had fallen at their feet in the choir, the Great Unforeseen once more flashed from its hiding-place and hurled itself into their midst.

The chapel rocked to and fro twice with a horrible noise of loosened masonry grinding on itself, and the panes of the high windows fell in three separate showers and were smashed to thousands of splinters on the stone floor, the lights went out, the sacred ornaments on the altar toppled and fell upon each other, the twilight that glimmered through the broken windows alone overcame the darkness in the wrecked church. The destruction was sudden, violent, and quick. In less than fifteen seconds after the shock, perfect stillness reigned again.

The Sisters, in their first terror, caught at each other instinctively, or grasped the woodwork with convulsed hands. One or two novices had screamed outright, but the most of them uttered an ejaculatory prayer, more than half unconscious. The Mother Superior was standing upright and motionless in her place.

'Is any one hurt?' she asked steadily, and looking round the semicircle in the gloom.

No answer came to her question.

'If any one of you was struck by anything,' she said again, 'let her speak.'

No one had been hurt, for the small choir was under the apse of the chapel and there were no windows there.

'Let us go to the hospital at once,' she said. 'The patients will need us.'

Her calm imposed itself upon the young novices and one or two of the more nervous Sisters; the others were brave women and had only been badly startled and shaken, for which no one could blame them. They filed out, two and two, by the side door of the choir, Mother Veronica coming last. From the cloister they could see that the big glass door of the reception-hall was smashed, and that the windows overhead on that side were also broken. Singularly enough, not one of those on the other side was injured.