All had felt the certainty that a dynamite bomb had been exploded somewhere in the building with the intention of blowing up the hospital. As they fell out of their ranks and scattered in twos and threes, hastening to the different parts of the establishment where each did her accustomed work, Sister Giovanna naturally found herself beside the Mother Superior. As one of the supervising nurses, she was, of course, needed in the hospital itself with her superior.

'What do you think it was, Mother?' she asked in a low tone.

'Nothing but dynamite could have done such damage——'

She was still speaking, when a lay sister rushed out of the door they were about to enter, with a broom in her hand, which she had evidently forgotten to put down.

'The powder magazine at Monteverde!' she cried excitedly. 'I saw it from the window! It was like fireworks! It has blown up with everybody in it, I am sure!'



CHAPTER XVII

The lay sister was right. The great powder magazine at Monteverde had been blown up, but by what hands no one has ever surely known. The destruction was sudden, complete, tremendous, for a large quantity of dynamite had been stored in the deep vaults. Today, a great hollow in the side of the hill and near the road marks the spot where the buildings stood. Many stories have been told of the catastrophe; many tales have been repeated about suspicious characters who had been seen in the neighbourhood before the fatal event, and for some of these there is fairly good authority.

All those who were in the city when the explosion took place, and I myself was in Rome at the time, will remember how every one was at first convinced that his own house had been struck by lightning or suddenly shaken to its foundations. Every one will remember, too, the long and ringing shower of broken glass that followed instantly upon the terrific report. Every window looking westward was broken at once, except some few on the lower stories of houses protected by buildings opposite.

Giovanni Severi was in the main building over the vaults a short time before the catastrophe, having just finished a special inspection which had occupied most of the afternoon. He was moving to leave the place when an unfamiliar sound caught his ears, a noise muffled yet sharp, like that of the discharge of musketry heard through a thick wall. The junior officers and the corporal who were with him heard it, too, but did not understand its meaning. Giovanni, however, instantly remembered the story told by one of the survivors from a terrible explosion of ammunition near Naples many years previously. That muffled sound of quick firing came from metallic cartridges exploding within the cases that held them; each case would burst and set fire to others beside it; like the spark that runs along a fuse, the train of boxes would blow up in quick succession till the large stores of gunpowder were fired and then a mass of dynamite beyond. There were divisions in the vaults, there were doors, there were walls, but Giovanni well knew that no such barriers would avail for more than a few minutes.

Without raising his voice, he led his companions to the open door, speaking as he went.

'The magazine will blow up in two or three minutes at the outside,' he said. 'Send the men running in all directions, and go yourselves, to warn the people in the cottages near by to get out of doors at once. It will be like an earthquake; every house within five hundred yards will be shaken down. Now run! Run for your lives and to save the lives of others! Call out the men as you pass the gates.'

The three darted away across the open space that lay between the central building and the guard-house. Giovanni ran, too, but not away from the danger. There were sentries stationed at intervals all round the outer wall, as round the walls of a prison, and they would have little chance of life if they remained at their posts. Giovanni ran like a deer, but even so he lost many seconds in giving his orders to each sentinel, to run straight for the open fields to the nearest cottages and to give warning. The astonished sentinels obeyed instantly, and Giovanni ran on. He reached the very last just too late; at that moment the thunder of the explosion rent the air. He felt the earth rock and was thrown violently to the ground; then something struck his right arm and shoulder, pinning him down; he closed his eyes and was beyond hearing or feeling.

Within three-quarters of an hour the road to Monteverde was thronged with vehicles of all sorts and with crowds of people on foot. The nature of the disaster had been understood at once by the soldiery, and the explanation had spread among the people, rousing that strange mixture of curiosity and horror that draws the common throng to the scene of every accident or crime. But amongst the very first the King was on the spot with half-a-dozen superior officers, and in the briefest possible time the search for dead and wounded began. The story of Giovanni's splendid presence of mind and heroic courage ran from mouth to mouth. The junior officers and the men whom he had sent in all directions came in and reported themselves to the officer who had taken charge of everything for the time being. Only one man was missing—only one man and Giovanni himself. A few casualties amongst the peasants were reported, but not a life had been lost and hardly a bone was broken. Yet Giovanni was missing.

With the confidence of men who understood that the magazine must have been so entirely destroyed at once as to annihilate all further danger in an instant, the searchers went up to the ruin of the outer wall and peered into the great dusty pit out of which the foundations of the magazine had been hurled hundreds of feet into the air. Something of the outline of the enclosure could still be traced, and the sentinels whom Giovanni had warned from their post had already told their story. They found, too, that the missing man himself had been one of the sentries, and the inference was clear: their commanding officer had been killed before he had reached the last post.

For a long time they searched in vain. Great masses of masonry had shot through the outer wall and had rolled on or been stopped by the inequalities of the ground. Most of the wall itself was fallen and its direction could only be traced by a heap of ruins. Twilight had turned to darkness, and the search grew more and more difficult as a fine rain began to fall. Below, the multitude was already ebbing back to Rome; it was dark, it was wet, hardly any one had been hurt, and there was nothing to see: the best thing to be done was to go home.

It was late when a squad of four artillerymen heard a low moan that came from under a heap of stones close by them. In an instant they were at work with the pickaxes and spades they had borrowed from the peasants' houses, foreseeing what their work would be. From time to time they paused a moment and listened. Before long they recognised their comrade's voice.

'Easy, brothers! Don't crack my skull with your pickaxes, for Heaven's sake!'

'Is the Captain there?' asked one of the men.

'Dead,' answered the prisoner. 'He was warning me when we were knocked down together. Make haste, but for goodness' sake be careful!'

They were trained men and they did their work quickly and well. What had happened was this. The heavy and irregular mass of masonry that had pinned Giovanni to the ground by his arm had helped to make a sort of shelter, across which a piece of the outer wall had fallen without breaking, followed by a mass of rubbish. By what seemed almost a miracle to the soldiers, their companion was entirely unhurt, and no part of the officer's body had been touched except the arm that lay crushed beneath the stones.

They cleared away the rubbish and looked at him as he lay on his back pale and motionless under the light of their lanterns. They knew what he had done now; they understood that of them all he was the hero. One of the men took off his cap reverently, and immediately the others followed his example, and so they all stood for a few moments looking at him in silence and in deference to his brave deeds. Then they set to work in silence to move the heavy block of broken masonry that had felled him, and their comrade helped them too, though he was stiff and bruised and dazed from the terrific shock. As the mass yielded at last before their strength and rolled away, one of the men uttered a cry.

'He is alive!' he exclaimed. 'He moved his head!'

Before he had finished speaking the man was on his knees beside Giovanni, tearing open his tunic and his shirt to listen for the beating of his heart. It was faint but audible. Giovanni Severi was not dead yet, and a few moments later his artillerymen were carrying him down the hill towards the road, his injured arm swinging like a rag at his side.

They did not wait for orders; there were a number of carriages still in the road and the men had no idea where their superiors might be. Their first thought was to get Giovanni conveyed to a hospital as soon as possible.

'We must take him to the White Sisters,' said the eldest of them. 'That is where his brother was so long.'

The others assented readily enough; and finding an empty cab in the road, they lifted the wounded officer into it and pulled up the hood against the rain, whilst two of them crept in under it, telling the cabman where to go.

In less than a quarter of an hour the cab stopped before the hospital of the White Sisters, and when the portress opened the door, the two artillerymen explained what had happened and begged that their officer might be taken in at once; and, moreover, that the portress would kindly get some money with which to pay the cabman, as they could only raise seven sous between them.

The Mother Superior had supposed that there would be many wounded, and had directed that the orderlies should be ready at the door with stretchers, although the Convent hospital did not receive accident cases or casualties except in circumstances of extreme emergency. The hospital of the Consolazione, close to the Roman Forum, was the proper place for these, but it was very much farther, and the White Sisters were so well known in all Trastevere that they were sometimes called upon, even in the middle of the night, to take in a wounded man who could not have lived to reach the great hospital beyond the Tiber.

Under the brilliant electric light in the main hall, the Mother Superior recognised Giovanni's unconscious face; his crushed arm, hanging down like a doll's, and his torn and soiled uniform, told the rest. He was taken at once to the room his brother had occupied so long. The Mother Superior herself helped the surgeon and another Sister to do all that could be done then. Sister Giovanna knew nothing of his coming, for she was in the wards, where there was much to be done. The patients who had fever had been severely affected by the terrible explosion, and most of them were more or less delirious and had to be quieted. In the windows that look westward every pane of glass was broken, though the outer shutters had been closed at sunset, a few minutes before the catastrophe. There were heaps of broken glass to be cleared away, and the patients whose beds were now exposed to draughts were moved. Sister Giovanna, who was not the supervising nurse for the week, worked quietly and efficiently with the others, carrying out all directions as they were given; but her heart misgave her, and when one of the nuns came in and said in a low voice that an officer from Monteverde had been brought in with his arm badly crushed, she steadied herself a moment by the foot of an iron bedstead. In the shaded light of the ward no one noticed her agonised face.

Presently she was able to ask where the officer was, and the Sister who had brought the news announced that he was in Number Two. It was Giovanni now, and not his brother, the unhappy woman was sure of that, and every instinct in her nature bade her go to him at once. But the unconscious volition of those long trained to duty is stronger than almost any impulse except that of downright fear, and Sister Giovanna stayed where she was, for there was still much to be done.

About half-an-hour later the Mother Superior entered the ward and found her and led her quietly out. When they were alone together, the elder woman told her the truth.

'Giovanni Severi has been brought here from Monteverde,' she said. 'His right arm is so badly crushed that unless it is amputated he will certainly die.'

Sister Giovanna did not start, for she had guessed that he had received some terrible injury. She answered quietly enough, by a question.

'Is he conscious?' she asked. 'I believe that, by the law, his consent must be obtained before the operation.'

'He came to himself, but the doctor thought it best to give him a hypodermic of morphia and he is asleep.'

'Did he speak, while he was conscious?'

The Mother Superior knew what was passing in her daughter's mind, and looked quietly into the expectant eyes.

'He did not pronounce your name, but he said that he would rather die outright than lose his right arm. In any case, it would not be possible to amputate it during the night. He had probably dined before the accident, and it will not be safe to put him under ether before to-morrow morning.'

Sister Giovanna did not speak for a few moments, though the Mother Superior was almost quite sure what her next words would be, and that the young nun was mentally weighing her own strength of character with the circumstances that might arise.

'May I take care of him to-night?' she asked at last rather suddenly, like a person who has decided to run a grave risk.

'Can you be sure of yourself?' asked the elder woman, trying to put the question in the authoritative tone which she would have used with any other Sister in the community.

But it was of no use; when she thought of all it meant, and of what the delicate girl was to her, all the coldness went out of her voice and the deepest motherly sympathy took its place. The answer came after a short pause in which the question was finally decided.

'Yes. I can be sure of myself now.'

'Then come with me,' answered the Mother Superior.

They followed the passage to the lift, were taken up to the third floor, and a few moments later were standing before the closed door of Number Two. The Mother Superior paused with her hand on the door knob. She looked silently at her young companion, as if repeating the question she had already asked; and Sister Giovanna understood and slowly bent her head.

'I can bear anything now,' she said.

She opened the door, and the two entered the quiet room, where one of the Sisters sat reading her breviary by the shaded light in the corner. The wounded man lay fast asleep under the influence of the morphia, and the white coverlet was drawn up to his chin. He was not very pale, Sister Giovanna thought; but she could not see well, because there was a green shade over the small electric lamp in the corner of the room.

'Sister Giovanna will take your place for to-night,' said the Mother Superior to the nun, who had risen respectfully, and who left the room at once.

The mother and daughter turned to the bedside and stood looking down at the sleeping man's face. Instinctively their hands touched and then held each other. Experience told them both that in all probability Giovanni would sleep till morning under the drug, and would wake in a dreamy state in which he might not recognise his nurse at once; but sooner or later the recognition must take place, words must be spoken, and a question must be asked. Would he or would he not consent to the operation which alone could save his life? So far as the two women knew and understood the law, everything depended on that. If he deliberately refused, it would be because he chose not to live without Angela, not because he feared to go through life a cripple. They were both sure of that, and they were sure also that if any one could persuade him to choose life where the choice lay in his own hands, it would be Sister Giovanna herself. The operation was not one which should be attended with great danger; yet so far as the law provided it was of such gravity as to require the patient's own consent.

Neither of the two nuns spoke again till the Mother Superior was at the door to go out.

'If you want me, ring for the lay sister on duty and send for me,' she said. 'I will come at once.'

She did not remember that she had ever before said as much to a nurse whose night was beginning.

'Thank you,' answered Sister Giovanna; 'I think he will sleep till morning.'

The door closed and she made two steps forward till she stood at the foot of the bed. For a few moments she gazed intently at the face she knew so well, but then her glance turned quickly toward the corner where the other nurse had sat beside the shaded lamp. That should be her place, too, but she could not bear to be so far from him. Noiselessly she brought a chair to the bedside and sat down so that she could look at his face. Since she had been in the room she had felt something new and unexpected—the deep, womanly joy of being alone to take care of the beloved one in the hour of his greatest need. She would not have thought it possible that a ray of light could penetrate her darkness, or that in her deep distress anything approaching in the most distant degree to a sensation of peace and happiness could come near her. Yet it was there and she knew it, and her heart rested. It was an illusion, no doubt, a false dawn such as men see in the tropics, only to be followed by a darker night; but while it lasted it was the dawn for all that. It was a faint, sweet breath of happiness, and every instinct of her heart told her that it was innocent. She would have, been contented to watch over him thus, in his sleep, for ever, seeing that he too was momentarily beyond suffering.

It seemed, indeed, as if it might be long before any change came; his breathing was a little heavy, but was regular as that of a sleeping animal; his colour was even and not very pale; his eyes were quite shut and the eyelids did not quiver nor twitch. The tremendous drug had brought perfect calm and rest after a shock that would have temporarily shattered the nerves of the strongest man. Then, too, there was nothing to be seen and there was nothing in the room to suggest the terrible injury that was hidden under the white coverlet—nothing but the lingering odour of iodoform, to which the nun was so well used that she never noticed it.

Hour after hour she sat motionless on the chair, her eyes scarcely ever turning from his face. He was so quiet that there was absolutely nothing to be done; to smooth his pillow or to pass a gentle hand over his forehead would have been to risk disturbing his perfect quiet, and she felt not the slightest desire to do either. For a blessed space she was able to put away the thought of the question which would be asked when he wakened, and which he only could answer. It was not a night of weary waiting nor of anxious watching; while its length lasted, he was hers to watch, hers alone to take care of, and that was so like happiness that the hours ran on too swiftly and she was startled when she heard the clock of the San Michele hospice strike three; she remembered that it had struck nine a few minutes after she had sat down beside him.

Her anxiety awoke again now, and that delicious state of peace in which she had passed the night began to seem like a past dream. In a little more than an hour the dawn would begin to steal through the outer blinds—the dawn she had watched for and longed for a thousand times in five years of nursing. It would be unwelcome now; it would mean the day, and the day could only mean for her the inevitable question.

She sat down again to watch him, for she had risen nervously in the first moment of returning distress; and she felt the cold of the early morning stealing upon her as she became gradually sure that his breathing was softer, and that from time to time a very slight quivering of the closed lids proclaimed the gradual return of consciousness. He would not wake in pain, or at least not in any acute suffering; she knew that by experience, for in such cases the nerves near the injured part generally remained paralysed for a long time. But he would wake sleepily at first, wondering where he was, glancing vaguely from one wall to another, from the foot of the bed or the window to her own face, without recognising it or understanding anything. That first stage might last a few minutes, or half-an-hour; he might even fall asleep again and not wake till much later. But sooner or later recognition would come, and with it a shock to him, a sudden tension of the mind and nerves, under which he might attempt to move suddenly in his bed, and that might be harmful, though she could not tell how. She wondered whether it would not be her duty to leave him before that moment. It was true that he would recognise the room in which he had so often spent long hours with his brother; he would know, as soon as he was conscious, that he was in the Convent hospital and under the same roof with her; then he would ask for her. Perhaps the surgeon would think it better that he should see her, but she would not be left alone with him; possibly she might be asked by the Mother Superior or by Monsignor Saracinesca, if he chanced to come that morning, to use her influence with Giovanni in order that he might submit to what alone could save him from death. It was going to be one of the hardest days in all her life—would God not stay the dawn one hour?

It was stealing through the shutters now, grey and soft, and the wounded man's sleep was unmistakably lighter. Sister Giovanna drew back noiselessly from the bedside and carried her chair to the corner where the little table stood, and sat down to wait again. It might be bad for him to wake and see some one quite near him, looking into his face.

At that moment the door opened quietly and the Mother Superior stood on the threshold, looking preternaturally white, even for her. Sister Giovanna rose at once and went to meet her. They exchanged a few words in a scarcely audible whisper. The Mother had come in person to take the nun's place for a while, judging that it would not be well if Giovanni wakened and found himself alone with her.

The Sister went to her cell, where she had not been since the explosion on the previous evening. The brick floor was strewn with broken glass and was damp with the fine rain, driven through the lattice by the southwest wind during the night. Even the rush-bottomed chair was all wet, and the edge of the white counterpane on the little bed. It was all very desolate.



CHAPTER XVIII

Giovanni opened his eyes at last, looked at the ceiling for a few moments, and then closed them again. Plain white ceilings are very much alike, and for all he could see as he looked up he was at home in his own bed, at dawn, and there was plenty of time for another nap. He felt unaccountably heavy, too, though not exactly sleepy, and it would be pleasant to feel himself going off into unconsciousness again for a while, knowing that there was no hurry.

But his eyes had not been shut long before he became aware that he was in a strange place. He could not sleep again because an unfamiliar odour of iodoform irritated his nostrils; he missed something, too, either some noise outside to which he was used or some step near him. In the little house at Monteverde he could always hear his orderly cleaning the stable early in the morning; he grew suddenly uneasy and tried to turn in his bed, and instead of the noise of broom and bucket and sousing, he heard the indescribably soft sound of felt shoes on tiles as the Mother Superior came to his side.

Then, in a flash, he remembered everything, up to the time when he had been hurt, and after the moment when he had at first come to himself in the room where he now was. His eyes opened again, and he saw and recognised the Mother Superior, whom he had often seen and spoken with during his brother's stay in the hospital. Suddenly he was quite himself, for his hurt was altogether local and he had lost little blood; he only felt half paralysed on that side.

'Were there many killed?' he asked quietly.

'We do not know,' the Mother answered. 'When it is a little later I will telephone for news. It is barely five o'clock yet.'

'Thank you, Mother.' He shut his eyes again and said no more.

The Mother Superior opened the window and let in the fresh morning air, full of the glow of the rising sun, for the room looked to the eastward, across the broad bend of the Tiber and towards the Palatine. She turned out the electric light in the corner, then went to the window again and refreshed herself by drawing long breaths at regular intervals, as she had been taught to do when she was a beginner at nursing. Presently the injured man called her and she went to the bedside again.

'It would be very kind of you to take down a few words which I should like to dictate,' he said. 'No,' he continued quickly, as he saw a grave look in the nun's face, 'it is not my will! It will be a short report of what happened before the explosion. They will want it at headquarters and my head is quite clear now. Will you write for me, Mother?'

'Of course.'

There is always a pencil with a memorandum-pad in every private room of a hospital, for the use of the nurse and the doctor. The Mother Superior took both from the table and sat down close to the bed, and Giovanni dictated what he had to say in a clear and businesslike way that surprised her, great as her experience had been. When he had finished, he asked her to read it over to him, and pointed out one small correction to be made.

'I think I can sign it with my left hand, if you will hold it up for me,' he said.

His fingers traced his name with the pencil, though very unsteadily, and he begged her to send it to headquarters at once. There was always some one on duty there, he explained, if it was only the subaltern commanding the guard. She need not be afraid of leaving him alone for a few moments, he added, for he was in no pain and did not feel at all faint. Besides, she would now send him another nurse—he had not thanked her for taking care of him herself during the night—he hoped she would forgive his omission—he was still——

And thereupon, while in the very act of speaking, he fell asleep again, exhausted by the effort he had made, and still under the influence of the strong drug. The Mother understood, glanced at him and slipped away, closing the door very softly. She knew that stage of awakening from the influence of opium, with its alternating 'zones' of sleep and waking.

It was half-past five now, and a spring morning, and all was astir downstairs; lay sisters were gathering the broken glass into baskets, the portress was clearing away the wreck of broken panes from the outer hall, and the nun who had charge of the chapel was preparing the altar for matins. No one was surprised to see the Mother Superior in the cloister so early, for she was often the first to rise and almost always the last to go to rest; the novices said that the little white volcano never slept at all, but was only 'quiescent' during a part of the night.

She found one of the orderlies scrubbing the outer doorstep, and despatched him at once with Giovanni's report, which she had put into an envelope and directed. He was to bring back an answer if there was any; and when he was gone, as he had not finished his job, she took the scrubbing broom in her small hands and finished it herself, with more energy, perhaps, than had been expended upon the stones for some time. Before she had quite done, the portress caught sight of her and was filled with horror.

'For the love of heaven!' she cried, trying to take the broom herself.

The nun would not let it go, however, and pushed her aside gently, with a smile.

'If any one should see your Reverence!' protested the portress.

'My dear Anna,' answered the Mother Superior, giving the finishing strokes, 'they would see an old woman washing a doorstep, and no harm would be done.'

But the example remained impressed on the good lay sister's mind for ever, and to her last days she will never tire of telling the novices how the Mother Superior washed the doorstep of the hospital herself on the morning after the explosion at Monteverde.

The delivery of the report produced a more immediate result than either Giovanni or the Mother had expected. The accident had happened near sunset, and the story of Giovanni's heroic behaviour had been repeated everywhere before midnight. The men who had found him had, of course, reported the fact after the first confusion was over, but it was some time before the news got up to any superior officer, though the King's aide-de-camp had left instructions that any information about Giovanni was to be telephoned to the Quirinal at once. When it had been understood at last that he was in the private hospital of the White Sisters, badly injured but alive, it was too late to think of sending an officer to make inquiries in person. On the other hand, six o'clock in the morning is not too early for most modern sovereigns, general officers, and members of the really hard-working professions, among which literature is sometimes included. In half-an-hour Giovanni's little report had been read, copied, telephoned, and telegraphed, and in less than half-an-hour more a magnificent personage in the uniform of a colonel of cavalry on the General Staff, accompanied by a less gorgeous but extremely smart subaltern, stopped at the door of the Convent hospital in a Court carriage. He came to ask after Captain Severi on behalf of the Sovereign, and to ascertain whether he could perhaps be seen during the morning. He was told that this must depend on the surgeon's decision; he expressed his thanks to the portress with extreme civility and drove away again. Before long other officers came to make similar inquiries, in various uniforms and in slightly varying degrees of smartness, from the representative of the War Office and the Commander-in-Chief's aide-de-camp to unpretending subalterns in undress uniform, who were on more or less friendly terms with Giovanni and were suddenly very proud of it, since he had become a hero.

Then came the reporters and besieged the door for news—an untidy lot of men at that hour, unshaven, hastily dressed, and very sorry for themselves because they had been beaten up by their respective papers so early in the morning. They were also extremely disappointed because the portress had no story to tell and would not hear of letting them in; and they variously described her afterwards as Cerberus, Argus, and the Angel of the Flaming Sword, which things agree not well together. The portress had a busy morning, even after Doctor Pieri had come and had written out a bulletin which she could show to all comers as an official statement of the injured man's condition.

The great surgeon and the Mother Superior sat on opposite sides of his bed, and now that the sun had risen high the blinds were half drawn together and hooked in the old-fashioned Roman way, to keep out some of the light, while the glass was left open. A broad stripe of sunshine fell across the counterpane below Giovanni's knees, and a sharp twittering and a rushing of wings broke the stillness every few seconds, as the circling swallows flew past the half-open window.

'So you refuse to undergo the operation?' Pieri said, after a long pause. 'Is that your last word? Shall I go away and leave you to die?'

'How long will that take?' asked Giovanni calmly.

'Probably from four to ten days, according to circumstances,' replied the surgeon.

'Say a week, more or less. Will it hurt much?'

'Not unless you have lockjaw, which is possible. If you do, you will suffer.'

'Horribly,' said the Mother Superior, unconsciously covering her eyes with one hand for a moment; she had seen men die of tetanus.

'You will give me anaesthetics,' Giovanni answered philosophically. 'Besides, I would rather bear pain for a day or two than go through life a cripple with an empty sleeve!'

'It is deliberate suicide,' said the Mother Superior sadly.

'I incline to think so, too,' echoed the surgeon, 'though I believe the priests do not exactly consider it so.'

Though he was half paralysed by his injury, Giovanni Severi smiled grimly.

'It would be very amusing if I died with the priests on my side after all,' he said, 'and against our good Mother Superior, too! You don't know how kind she is, Doctor; she has sat up all night with me herself!'

Pieri was surprised, and looked quietly at the nun, who immediately rose and went to the window, pretending to arrange the blinds better. But there are moments when the truth seems to reveal itself directly to more than one person at the same time. The surgeon, whose intuitions were almost feminine in their swift directness, guessed at once why the Mother did not answer: not only she had not sat up with Giovanni herself, but she had allowed Sister Giovanna to do so, and as the patient had not wakened and recognised his nurse, it was not desirable that he should now know the truth. As for Giovanni himself, the certainty that came over him was more like 'thought-reading,' for neither he himself nor any one else could have explained the steps of reasoning by which he reached his conclusion. It was probably a mere guess, which happened to be right, and was founded on a little anxious shrinking of the Mother Superior's head and shoulders when she crossed the room and went to the window, as if she had something to hide. Giovanni saw it, and then his eyes met Pieri's for a moment, and each was sure that the other knew.

'I need not ask you,' Giovanni said, 'whether you are absolutely sure that I must die if you do not take off my arm at the shoulder?'

'Humanly speaking,' replied the other gravely, 'I am quite sure that gangrene will set in before to-morrow morning, and that is certain death in your case.'

'Why do you say, in my case?'

'Because,' Pieri answered with a little impatience, 'if it began in your foot, for instance, or in your hand, it would take some little time to reach the vital parts, and the arm or leg could still be amputated; but in your case it will set in so near the heart that no operation will be of any use after it begins. Do you understand?'

'Perfectly. I shall take less time to die, for the same reason.'

Severi was very quiet about it; but the Mother Superior turned on him suddenly from the window, her small face very white.

'It is suicide,' she said—'deliberate, intentional suicide, and no right-thinking man, priest or layman, would call it by any other name, let Doctor Pieri say what he will! You are in full possession of your senses, and even of your health and strength, at this moment, and you are assured that you run no risk if you submit to the doctors, but that if you will not you must die! You are choosing death where you can choose life, and that is suicide if anything is! Doctor Pieri knows well enough what a good priest would say, and so do I, who have been a nurse for a quarter of a century! If the injury were internal, and if there were a real risk to your life in operating, you would have the right, the moral right, to choose between the danger of dying under ether and the comparative certainty of dying of the injury. But this is a specific case. You are young, strong, absolutely healthy, and the chance of your dying from the anaesthetic is not one in thousands, whereas, if nothing is done, death is certain. I ask you, before God and man and on your honour, whether you do not know that you are committing suicide—nothing less than cowardly, dastardly self-murder!'

'If I am, it is my affair,' answered Giovanni coldly; 'but you need not leave out the rest. You believe that if I choose to die I shall go straight to everlasting punishment. I believe that if there is a God—and I do not deny that there may be—I shall not be damned because I would rather not live at all than go on living as half a man. And now, if you will let me have a cup of coffee and a roll, I shall be very grateful, for I have had nothing to eat since yesterday at one o'clock!'

He probably knew well enough what such a request meant just then—the putting off of a possible operation for hours, owing to the impossibility of giving ether to a man who has lately eaten anything. The Mother Superior and the surgeon looked at each other rather blankly.

'Shall I die any sooner if I am starved?' asked Giovanni almost roughly.

Pieri began to explain the danger, but Severi at once grew more impatient.

'I know all that,' he said, 'and I have told you my decision. I refuse to undergo an operation. If you choose to make me suffer from starvation I suppose it is in your power, though I am not sure. I fancy I can still stand and walk, and even my one hand may be of some use! If you do not give me something to eat, I shall get out of bed and fight my way to the larder!'

He smiled as he uttered the threat, as if he were not jesting about his own death. Pieri did not like it, and turned to the door.

'Since you talk of fighting,' he said, 'I would give you ether by force, if I could, and let the law do what it would after I had saved your life in spite of you! If you chose to blow your brains out afterwards, that would not concern me!'

Thereupon he disappeared, shutting the door more sharply than doctors usually do when they leave a sick-room. The Mother Superior went to the bedside and leaned over Giovanni, looking into his eyes with an expression of profoundest entreaty.

'I implore you to change your mind,' she said in a low and beseeching voice, 'for the sake of the mother who bore you——'

'She is dead,' Giovanni answered quietly.

'For the sake of them that live and love you, them——'

'There is only one, Mother, and you know it; but for that only one's love I would live, not merely with one arm, but if every bone in my body were broken and twisted out of shape beyond remedy. Mother, go and tell her so, and bring me her answer—will you?'

The nun straightened herself, and her face showed what she suffered; but Giovanni did not understand.

'You are afraid,' he said, with rising contempt in his tone. 'You are afraid to take my message. It would move her! It might tempt her from the right way! It might put it into her head to beg for a dispensation after all, and the sin would be on your soul! I understand—I did not really mean that you should ask her. You let her watch here last night when you knew I could not waken, but you were careful that she should be gone before I opened my eyes. You see, I have guessed the truth! I only wonder why you let her stay at all!'

He moved his head impatiently on the pillow. The Mother Superior had drawn herself up rather proudly, folding her hands under her scapular and looking down at him coldly, her face like a marble mask again.

'You are quite mistaken,' she said. 'I will deliver your message and Sister Giovanna shall give you her answer herself.'

She went towards the door, gliding across the floor noiselessly in her felt shoes; but just before she went out she turned to Giovanni again, and suddenly her eyes were blazing like live coals.

'And if you have the heart to kill yourself when you have talked with her,' she said, 'you are a coward, who never deserved to live and be called a man!'

She was gone before Giovanni could have answered, and the man who had risked life and limb to save others twelve hours earlier smiled faintly at the good Mother's womanly wrath and feminine invective.

He lay still on his back, staring at the ceiling, and he began to wonder what day of the week it would be when he would not be able to see it any more, and whether the end would come at night, or when the sunlight was streaming in, or on a rainy afternoon. He did not believe that Angela would be with him in a few minutes, and if she came—she would say——

The strength of the morphia was not yet quite spent, and he fell asleep in the middle of his train of thought, as had happened while he was speaking to the Mother in the early morning.

When he awoke the broad stripe of sunshine no longer fell across the counterpane, but lay on the gleaming tiles beyond the foot of the bed; and it fell, too, on Sister Giovanna's white frock and veil, for she was standing there motionless, waiting for him to waken. His head felt queer for a moment, and he wondered whether she would be standing on the same spot, with the same look, when he would be dying, a few days hence. There were deep purplish-brown rings under her eyes, which seemed to have sunk deeper in their sockets; there was no colour in her lips, or scarcely more than a shade; her young cheeks had grown suddenly hollow. For the Mother—her mother—had told her everything, and it was almost more than she could bear.

He looked at her two or three times, fixing his eyes on the ceiling in the intervals, to make sure that it was she and that he was awake; for there was something in his head that disturbed him now, a sort of beating on one side of the brain, with a dull feeling at the back, as if there were a quantity of warm lead there that kept his skull on the pillow. It was the beginning of fever, but he did not know it; it was the forewarner of the death he was choosing. The experienced nurse saw it in his face.

'Giovanni, do you know me?' she asked softly, coming a step nearer. Instantly, he had all his faculties again.

'Yes; come to me,' he answered.

She came nearer and stood beside him.

'Sit down,' he said. 'This is the side—the side of my good arm. Sit down and let me take your hand, dear.'

She wondered at his quiet tone and gentle manner. They almost frightened her, for she remembered taking care of impatient, short-tempered people who had suddenly softened like this just at the end. But there was no reason in the world why he should die now, and she dismissed the thought as she took the hand he put out and held it. It was icy cold, as strong men's hands generally are when a fever is just beginning. She tried to warm it between hers, covering it up between her palms as much as she could; but she herself was not warm either, for she had been in her cell, where there was no sun in the morning, and the air was chilly and damp, because it had rained in all night.

Giovanni spoke again before she could find words.

'My life is in your hands, with my hand, Angela,' he said. 'Do what you will with it.'

He felt that she shook from head to foot, like a young tree that is rudely struck. He went on, as if he had prepared his words, though he had not even thought of them.

'With your love and your companionship, I shall not miss a limb, I shall not regret my profession, I shall be perfectly happy. Alone, I will not be forced artificially to live out my life a wretched cripple.'

It was brutal, and perhaps he knew it; but he was desperate and fate had given him a weapon to move any woman. In plain truth, it was as cruel as if he had put a pistol to his head and threatened to pull the trigger if she would not marry him. He had not done that yet, even when she had been in his room at Monteverde and the loaded revolver had been between them.

Sister Giovanna kept his hand bravely in hers and sat still, though it was hard. The question which must be answered, and which she alone could answer, had been asked with frightful directness, and though she had known only too well that it was coming, its tremendous import paralysed her and she could not speak.

It was plainly this: Should she kill him, of her own free will, for the sake of the solemn vow she had taken? Or should she save his life by breaking, even under permission, what she looked on as an absolutely inviolable promise?

What made her position most terrible was the absolute certainty of the fatal result, and its close imminence. In his condition, to put off the operation for another day, in order to consider her answer, would be to condemn him to death according to all probability of human science, since a few hours longer than that would put probability out of the question and make it a positive certainty. She could not speak; her tongue would not move when she tried to form words and her breath made no sound in her throat.

For some time Giovanni said nothing more, and lay quite still. When he spoke again, his voice was gentle.

'Dear, since it must be, I should like it to come like this, if you will—with my hand between yours.'

It was too much, and she cried aloud and bowed herself. But the mortal pain freed her tongue, and a moment later she broke out in a fervent appeal.

'Live, Giovanni, live—for Christ's good sake who died for you—for my sake, too—for your own! Live the life that is still before you, and you can make it great! If you love me, make it a noble life for that, if for nothing else! Do you know, all Rome is ringing with the story of what you did last night—the King, the Court, the Ministers are sending for news of you every half-hour—the world is calling you a hero—will you let them think that you are afraid of an operation, or will you let my enemy tell the world that you have let yourself die for my sake? That is what it comes to, one or the other of those things!'

Severi smiled faintly and shook his head without lifting it from the pillow.

'No man will call me coward,' he answered; 'and no one would believe Princess Chiaromonte—not if she took oath on her death-bed!'

'Will nothing move you?' cried the unhappy woman, in utter despair. 'Nothing that I can say? Not the thought of what life will mean to me when you are gone? Not my solemn assurance that I can do nothing—nothing——'

'You can!' Giovanni cried, with sudden and angry energy. 'You are willing to let me die rather than risk the salvation of your own soul. That is the naked truth of all this.'

Her hands left his as if they had lost their strength, and she rose at the same instant and tottered backwards against the near wall, speechless and transfixed with horror at the mere thought that what he said might be true.

But Giovanni's eyes did not follow her; the door had opened quietly, and Monsignor Saracinesca was there and had heard the last words.

The prelate's face expressed neither displeasure nor reproach; it was only very thoughtful.

Giovanni was in no humour to receive a visit from a priest just then, even though the latter was an old acquaintance and had once been a friend. Moreover, the last time they had been together, they had parted on anything but good terms. Giovanni spoke first.

'Have you come, like the others, to accuse me of committing suicide?' he asked.

The answer was unexpected and uncompromising.

'No.'

Sister Giovanna, still half-stunned and steadying herself against the wall, turned wondering eyes to the speaker. The angry look in Severi's face changed to one of inquiry. He strongly suspected that the churchman had come to 'convert' him, as the phrase goes, and he was curious to see what line of argument a man of such intelligence and integrity would take.

'No,' repeated Monsignor Saracinesca, 'I have come for quite another purpose, which I hope to accomplish if you will listen to reason.'

The nun stood erect now, though still leaning back against the wall, and she had hidden her hands under her scapular.

'I do not think I am unreasonable,' Giovanni answered quietly. 'My position is this——'

'Do not tire yourself by going over it all,' the prelate answered. 'I understand your position perfectly, for I have been with the Mother Superior nearly half-an-hour. I am going to take something upon myself, as a man, which some of my profession may condemn. I am going to do it because I believe it is the right course, and I trust that God will forgive me if it is not.'

There was a tremor in the good man's voice, and he ceased speaking, as if to repeat inwardly the solemn words he had just spoken.

'What are you going to do?' asked Giovanni Severi.

On the question, the nun came forward and rested one hand on the chair in which she had sat, leaning towards the prelate at the same time, with parted lips and eyes full of a strange anticipation.

'You know, I daresay, that I am Secretary to the Cardinal Vicar, and that such cases as yours are to a great extent within my province?'

Giovanni did not know this, but nodded; the nun, who knew it, bent her head, wondering more and more what was coming, and not daring to guess. Neither spoke.

'I am going to lay the whole matter before the Cardinal Vicar at once,' Monsignor Saracinesca continued calmly. 'I can be with him in twenty minutes, and I am going to tell him the plain truth. I do not think that any nun was ever more true to her vows than Sister Giovanna has been since your return. But there is a limit beyond which fidelity to an obligation may bring ruin and even death on some one whom the promise did not at first concern. When the limit is reached, it is the plain duty of those who have received that promise to relieve the maker of it from its observance, even though not asked to do so. That is what I am going to say to the Cardinal Vicar in half-an-hour. Are you satisfied?'

Sister Giovanna sank sideways upon the chair, with her arm resting on the back of it, and she hid her face in her sleeve.

'Will the Cardinal listen to you?' asked Giovanni, his voice unsteady with emotion.

'What I recommend is usually done,' answered the prelate, without a shade of arrogance, but with the quiet certainty of a man in power. 'What I ask of you is, to submit at once to the operation that alone can save you, on the strength of my assurance that I am going to do my utmost to obtain what you desire.'

'It is hard to believe!' Giovanni exclaimed, almost to himself.

The nun moved her head silently from side to side without lifting her face from her arm.

'You can believe me,' Monsignor Saracinesca answered. 'I give you my solemn promise before God, and my word of honour before men, that I will do the utmost in my power to succeed. Do you believe me?'

Giovanni held out his sound hand. The churchman came nearer and took it.

'Will you risk the operation on that?' he asked.

The light of a profound gratitude illuminated the young soldier's tired face, and his fingers pressed Monsignor Saracinesca's spasmodically; but his voice was quiet when he spoke.

'Sister Giovanna——'

'Yes?'

The nun looked up suddenly and drew a sharp breath, for her joy was almost agonising.

'Will you kindly go and tell Doctor Pieri that I am ready?'

The nun rose with a spring and was at the door in an instant, and in her heart rang such a chorus of glory and rejoicing as not even the angels have heard since the Morning Stars sang together.

* * * * *

Of her, I think the most rigid cannot say that she had not endured to the end, for her vow's sake. Whether the churchman was too human in his sympathies or not may be an open question; if he was, he had the courage to make himself alone responsible, for, as he had foretold, what he recommended was done; if he was wrong, he has at least the consolation of having brought unspeakable happiness to three human beings. For the mother, whose heart had so nearly broken for her child, had her share of joy, too, and it was no small one.

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