might write to him if she thought fit. The prelate refused to say more than that, but the opinion was delivered in such manly and direct words that Castiglione was much impressed by it; and when, in the church, he had generously offered to leave Rome at once, because he saw in Maria’s face all the trouble and anxiety he feared for her, he had spoken with Ippolito Saracinesca’s honourable words still ringing in his ears. It was no wonder if he told Maria that she could not have chosen a better man of whom to ask help and advice; and though he knew what that advice would be, and felt sorrowfully sure that she would try to follow it, he almost smiled at the coincidence as he watched her cross the nave in the direction of the Sacristy.
And now, when she came back into the Basilica, she retraced her steps towards the tomb of Leo Twelfth. Again she stopped a moment and almost knelt as she passed before the Julian Chapel and went on to the north aisle; but when the small gate before which she had knelt with Castiglione was in sight she paused in the shadow of the pillar and leant against the marble, as if she were very tired.
Till then she had not dared to ask herself what she meant to do, but when she saw the place where she had so lately touched Castiglione’s hand in forgiveness of the past, the truth rushed back upon her, as the winter’s tide turns from the ebb to storm upon the beaten shore.
It was upon her, and she felt that it would sweep her from her feet and drown her; and it was not the imaged truth she had taught herself to believe those many years. She gazed at the closed gate, and she knew why she had forgiven her lover at last. It was because she wished to forgive herself, and she had found it easy, shamefully easy. The hour of evil came back to her memory with frightful vividness, and now her pale cheek burned with shame and she pressed it hard against the icy marble; and she forced her eyes to stay wide open, lest if she shut them for an instant, she should see what she remembered so horribly well.
She would not go to the gate again, now; the words she had said there had been false and untrue, the prayer she had breathed there had been a blasphemy and nothing else. For years and years she had lived in the mortal sin of those brief moments; unconfessing and unpardoned of God, she had gone to Communion month after month, telling herself that she was an innocent, suffering woman, doing her best to atone for another’s crime; yet she had always felt in the dark hiding-places of her heart the knowledge that it was all untrue, that she had been less sinned against than herself sinning, and that if she would die in the faith in which she had been brought up, and in the hope of life hereafter, she must some day humble herself and her pride to the earth, and ask of God and man the pardon she had granted just now as if it were hers to give.
It was too much; it was more than she could bear. In her anger and hatred of herself she found strength to turn from the pillar and to go on straight and quickly to the door. Two or three soldiers who had wandered in were just leaving the Basilica; they lifted the heavy curtain for her and she thanked them mechanically and passed out, holding her head high.
CHAPTER IV
Maria hardly knew how she had come home. She had no distinct recollection of having taken a cab, nor of having driven through the city, nor of having paid a cabman when she reached the Via San Martino. There are times when unconscious cerebration is quite enough for the ordinary needs of life. Maria neither fainted nor behaved in any unusual way during the half-hour that elapsed between her leaving the pillar against which she had leant in the church and the moment when she entered her own room. Even then she hardly knew that she gave her maid her hat and gloves and smoothed her hair before she went to her sitting-room to be alone.
But when she was there, in her favourite seat with her little table full of books beside her, her footstool at her feet and her head resting at last against a small silk cushion on the back of the chair—then the one thought that had taken possession of her pronounced itself aloud in the quiet room.
‘I have been a very wicked woman.’
That was all, and she said it aloud only once; but the words went on repeating themselves again and again in her brain, while she leaned back and stared steadily at the blank of the tinted ceiling; and for a time she turned her head wearily from side to side on the cushion, as people do who have little hope, and fear that the very worst is close at hand.
For many years she had sustained a part which her pride had invented to quiet her conscience. If it were not so, if she had really been the outraged victim of a moment’s madness, knowing herself quite innocent, why had she not gone to her husband, as an honest woman should, to ask for protection and to demand justice? Because she loved Castiglione still, perhaps; because she was willing to sacrifice everything rather than accuse him; because she would rather be dishonoured in her husband’s eyes than see her lover disgraced before the world. But that was not true; that was impossible. If Baldassare del Castiglione had been the wretch she had the courage to tell him he was when she bade him leave her for ever, Maria Montalto would not have hesitated an instant. He should have gone where justice sends such men, and she would have asked her husband to let her end her days out of the sight of the world she had known.
Her memory brought back the words she had spoken to Castiglione long ago under the ilex-trees in the Villa Borghese. She remembered the intonations of her own voice, she remembered how she had quivered with pain and anger while she spoke, how she had turned and left him there, leaning against a tree, very pale; for she had made him believe all she said, and that was the worst a woman can say. She had called him a coward and a brute, the basest of mankind; and he had obeyed her, and had left Rome that night because she had made him believe her.
But later, many months later, when Montalto solemnly accused her of having betrayed him, she had bent her head, and not one word of self-defence had risen to her lips; so her husband had turned away and left her, as she had turned and left her lover. He had been under the same roof with her after that, at more and more distant intervals till he had left Rome altogether; but never again, when they had been alone together, had he spoken one word to her except for necessity. Yet he had loved her then, and he loved her still; she had seen in his face that he was broken-hearted, and Monsignor Saracinesca had told her now that the deep hurt would not heal. She had played her comedy of innocence to her lover and to herself, but she had not dared to play it to her husband, lest some act of frightful injustice should be done to Baldassare del Castiglione.
She had forgiven Balduccio! She laughed at the thought now in bitter self-contempt. Her soul and her conscience had met face to face in the storm, and the expiation had begun. She must confess her fault to God and man, but first to man, first to that man to whom it would be most hard to tell the truth because she had been the most unjust to him, to Castiglione himself.
That was to be the answer to his question. There was no doubt now; he must go away. She could not allow him to exchange again into another regiment, in order that he might live near her for a time, nor could she let him leave the service altogether, to pass an idle life in Rome. Every word that Don Ippolito had spoken was unanswerable, and there was much more that he had not said. She might not be able to trust herself after all; after reconciliation, friendship would come, cool, smiling and self-satisfied, but behind friendship there was a love that neither could hide long, and beyond love there was human passion, strong and wakeful, with burning eyes and restless hands, waiting till the devil opportunity should come suddenly and spread his dusky wings as a tent and a shelter for sin. Maria was still brave enough to fear that, and something told her that fear of herself must be the first step on which to rise above herself.
She left her seat at last and sat down at a table to write to Castiglione; but when she tried to word a note it was not easy. It would not be wise, either, for such words as she wished to send him are better not written down. Maria realised this before she had penned three lines, and she tore the bit of paper
