of meeting her.
After a week they met by what seemed an accident to them both. Maria was almost ill, and could no longer bear her trouble without some help. There was in Rome a good priest of her own class—a man in ten thousand, a man of heart, a man of courage, a man of the highest honour and of the purest life. If she had not always disliked the idea of meeting her confessor in the world, she would have chosen this man for hers long ago. If he had been in Rome in the darkest months of her life she would certainly have gone to him for advice; but he had then been working as a parish priest in a remote and fever-stricken part of the Maremma, and it was because his health had broken down that he had been obliged to give up his labours and come back to Rome. He was now a Canon of Saint Peter’s, and was employed as Secretary to the Cardinal Vicar, but found time to occupy himself with matters nearer to his heart. His name was Monsignor Ippolito Saracinesca; he was the second son of Don Giovanni, the head of the great family, and he was about forty years old.
To him Maria Montalto determined to go in her extremity. She was not quite sure how she should tell him her story, but for the sake of what she had said to Castiglione she would not put it in the form of a confession. She would not need to tell so much of it but that she could lay it before him as an imaginary case—which is a foolish device when it is meant to hide a secret, but is useful as a means of communicating one that is hard to tell.
Monsignor Saracinesca was generally at Saint Peter’s at about eleven o’clock, and Maria made sure of finding him there by telephoning to the Saracinesca palace, in which he had a small apartment of his own. At half-past ten she left her house alone, took a cab and drove across Rome to the Basilica. She got out at the front and went up the steps, for she had never before been to see any one in the Sacristy, and was not quite sure of what would happen if she went directly to it at the back of the church.
She entered on the right-hand side, by force of habit. There is a very heavy wadded leathern curtain there, and she had to pull it aside for herself, which was not easy. Just as she was doing this, and using all her strength, some one pushed the curtain up easily from within, and she found herself face to face with Baldassare del Castiglione, and very near him. She started violently, for she was even more nervous than usual. He himself was so much surprised that he drew his head back quickly; then he bent it silently and stood aside, holding up the curtain for her to pass, as if not expecting that she would stop to speak to him.
‘Thank you,’ she said, going in.
She tried to smile a little, just as much as one might with a word of thanks; but the effort was so great, and her face was so pale and disturbed, that it made a painful impression on him, and he watched her anxiously till she had gone a few steps forward into the church, for he was really afraid that she might faint and fall, and perhaps hurt herself, and there was no one near the door just then to help her.
But she walked straight enough, and he had just begun to lower the heavy curtain, turning his head as he passed under it, when he heard her call him sharply.
‘Balduccio!’
It was very long since she had called him familiarly by his first name, and his heart stood still at the sound of her voice. A moment later he was within the church, and met her as she was coming back to the door.
‘You called me?’
‘Yes.’
They turned to the right into the north aisle, and walked slowly forwards, side by side. There were not many people in the Basilica at that hour, for it was a week-day, and the season of the tourists was almost over. At some distance before them, two or three people were kneeling before the closed gate of the Julian Chapel. Maria and Castiglione were as much alone as if they had been in the country, and as free to talk, for no conversation, even in an ordinary tone, can be heard far in the great cathedral. Nevertheless Maria did not speak.
‘You are ill,’ Castiglione said, breaking the silence at last. ‘Let me take you to your carriage.’
‘No. I came here for a good purpose, and I cannot go home without doing what I mean to do.’
‘I wish with all my heart that I had not come back to Rome to disturb your peace! It is my fault that you are suffering.’
‘No. It is not your fault.’ She spoke gently. ‘It is a consequence, that’s all. You had a right to ask me that question, and you have a right to an answer. But I cannot find one. That is what is troubling me.’
‘You are kind to me,’ said Castiglione. ‘Too kind,’ he added, and she knew by his tone how much he was moved.
She turned in her walk before she answered, for they were already near the Julian Chapel.
‘No,’ she said after a minute, and she bent her head. ‘Not too kind—if you knew all.’
He looked quickly at her face, but she did not turn to him. His heart beat hard and his throat felt suddenly dry.
‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ she said, still looking steadily down at the pavement. ‘I meant, if you knew how much I wish to be just—to myself as well as to you, Balduccio.’
‘I do not want justice,’ he answered sadly. ‘I ask for forgiveness.’
‘Yes. I know.’
She said no more, and they walked slowly on. At the little gate of Leo the Twelfth’s Chapel she stopped, and she took hold of the bars with both hands and looked in, leaving room for him to stand beside her.
‘Justice,’ she cried in a low voice, ‘justice, justice! To you, to me, to my husband! God help us all three!’
He did not understand, but he felt that a change had come over her since he had seen her a week earlier, and that it was in his favour rather than against him.
‘Justice!’ he repeated after her, but in a very different tone. ‘It would have been justice if I had put a bullet through my head when I went home that night!’
Maria’s hands left the bars of the gate and grasped Castiglione’s arm above the elbow and shook it a little.
‘Never say that again!’ she cried in a stifled voice. ‘Promise me that you will never think it again! Promise!’
He was amazed at her energy and earnestness, and he understood less and less what was passing in her heart.
‘I can only promise you that I will never do it,’ he answered gravely.
‘Yes,’ she cried in the same tone, ‘promise me that! It is what I mean. Give me your sacred word of honour! Take oath to me before the Cross—there—do you see?’ she pointed with one hand through the bars to the Crucifix in the stained window, still holding him with the other. ‘Swear solemnly that you will never kill yourself, whatever happens!’
He could well have asked if she loved him still, and she could not have denied it then; but he would not, for he was in earnest too. He had not meant to trouble her life so deeply when he had come to ask her forgiveness; far less had he dreamt that the old love had survived all. A great wave of pure devotion to the woman he had wronged swept him to her feet.
It was long since he had knelt in any church; but now he was kneeling beside her as she stood, and he was looking up to the sacred figure, and his hands were joined together.
‘You
