on, quietly and kindly.
‘But if you allow Castiglione to come back and live here, and to see you, even rarely, it will all be different. Think only of what the world will say; and what the world says will be repeated to your husband. You have broken his heart, and all but ruined his life; remember that he loves you as much as your lover ever did; think what he has felt, what he has suffered! And then consider, too, that if anything has softened the bitterness of his pain, it has been the faultless life you have led since. Before God it is enough to do right, but before the world it is not. Men do not accept the truth unless it is outwardly proved to them. That is a part of the social contract by which our outward lives are bound. Allow Castiglione to come to Rome, to be seen with you and at your house, even now and then, and the world will have no mercy. It will say that you are tired of your loneliness, and have taken him back to be to you what he was. Then people will laugh at Teresa Crescenzi’s clever story instead of believing it. You came to me as to a friend, and as what you call a man of the world, and I give you what I think will be the world’s view. Am I right, or not?’
There was a long pause. Then Maria tried to meet the good man’s earnest eyes, but her own wandered to one of the angels on the wall.
‘You are right,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Yes, you are right. I see it now.’
Her gaze was fixed upon the lovely frescoed head, with its glory of golden hair and its look of heavenly innocence. But she did not see it; she was thinking that if she did right she must tell Castiglione never to come back, and that the aching, lonely life that had seemed once more so full for a brief space was to begin again to-morrow, and was to last until she died. And she was thinking that her husband might come back.
Monsignor Saracinesca waited quietly after she had spoken, for since she admitted the truth of what he urged he felt that there was nothing more to say. After a little while Maria collected her strength for the effort and rose from her seat, still resting one hand on the great table.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You have been very kind. All you have told me is true. I shall try to follow your advice.’
‘I hope you will,’ answered the Churchman. ‘You will not find it so hard as you think.’
She smiled faintly, as gentle people do sometimes when they are in great pain and well-disposed persons tell them that suffering is all a matter of imagination.
‘Oh, no!’ she answered. ‘I shall find it very, very hard.’
The grey-haired man sighed and smiled at her so sadly and kindly that she felt herself drawn to him even more than before. She was standing close to him now, and looked up trustfully to his spiritual face and deeply thoughtful eyes.
‘I did not know I loved him so much till he came back,’ she said simply. ‘How could I? I did not guess that I had forgiven him long ago!’
‘Poor child! God help you!’
‘I need help.’ She was silent for a moment, and then looked down. ‘Do you write to my husband?’ she asked timidly.
‘Sometimes. I have little time for writing letters. Should you like to send him any message?’
‘Oh, no!’ she cried in a startled tone. ‘But oh, if you write to him, don’t urge him to come back! Don’t make him think it is his duty. It cannot be his duty to make any one so unhappy as I should be!’
‘I shall not give him any advice whatever unless he asks for it,’ replied Don Ippolito, ‘and if he does, I shall answer that I think he should write to you directly, for I would rather not try to act as his adviser. I told you that he did not take my advice the first time.’
‘Yes—but—you have been so kind! Would you tell me what you wished him to do then?’
The priest thought a moment.
‘I cannot tell you that,’ he said presently.
Maria looked surprised, and shrank back a little, suspecting that he had suggested some course which might have offended or hurt her. He understood intuitively.
‘It would be a betrayal of confidence to Montalto,’ he added, ‘to tell you what I advised him, and what he did not do. But I still think it would have been better for both of you if he had done it.’
Maria looked puzzled.
‘I am sorry,’ he said, in a tone from which there was no appeal, ‘but I cannot tell you.’
She looked at him a little hardly at first; then she remembered what every one in Rome knew, that the delicate, shadow-like man with the clear brown eyes had risked being tried for murder when he was a young priest rather than betray a confession which had been anything but formal. Her tired face softened as she thought of that.
‘I am sorry I asked you,’ she said. ‘I did not mean to be inquisitive.’
‘It was natural that you should ask the question,’ he answered, ‘but it would not have been quite honourable in me to answer it.’
‘I trust you all the more because you refused me,’ she said. ‘And now I must be going, for I have kept you a long time.’
‘Scarcely a quarter of an hour.’ He smiled as he glanced at the hideous modern clock on the table.
She left him after thanking him and pressing his thin, kindly hand, and she made her way back to the church, feeling a little faint.
When she was gone Monsignor Saracinesca returned to the question of the picture which was to be hung, but for a while he could not give it all the attention that a beautiful Hans Memling deserved. He was thinking of what he had said to Maria, and not only of that, but of what he had said to Baldassare del Castiglione a quarter of an hour earlier.
For that was the coincidence which had brought the two together that morning at the door of the church. Castiglione had taken it into his head to see Don Ippolito on the same day; like Maria, he had telephoned to the palace and had learned that his old acquaintance was usually to be found in the Sacristy about eleven; being a soldier, he had gone punctually at the hour, whereas Maria had not arrived till fifteen or twenty minutes later, and it was therefore almost a certainty that they should meet.
It had not been easy for Don Ippolito, taken by surprise as he was. But Castiglione had put his case as one man of honour may to another, and had told as much of the truth as he might without casting the least slur on Maria’s good name. He had loved her before her marriage, he had said; he loved her still. After she had been married he had left her no peace, and Montalto had made him the reason for leaving her. She had bidden him, Castiglione, to go away and never see her again. He had so far obeyed as to stay away several years. He had come back at last to ask her forgiveness; he was not sure of obtaining it—he had not yet met her in the church—but he came to Don Ippolito as a friend. His love for Maria was great, he said, but even if she forgave him, he would never see her again rather than be the cause of any further trouble or anxiety to her. What did Don Ippolito think? Don Ippolito considered the matter for a few minutes, and then said that in his opinion any renewal of friendly intercourse between Castiglione and the Countess would surely bring trouble and would inevitably cause her anxiety. If Castiglione loved her in the way he believed he did, he would think more of her welfare than of the pleasure he would have in seeing her. If he was sure that his thoughts of her were what he represented them to be, he could write
