"Lofty and lone: and lo, when next I looked
There was the Rafael!"
Fat little Conti noticed his rapt gaze, and exclaimed that he would make the lady respond to it. He tossed a paper of comfits into her lap; she turned,
"Looked our way, smiled the beautiful sad strange smile;"
and thought the thought that we have learned—for instinctively and surely she felt that whoever had thrown the comfits, it was not "that man":
". . . Silent, grave,
Solemn almost, he saw me, as I saw him."
Conti told Caponsacchi who she was, and warned him to look away; but promised to take him to the castle if he could. At Vespers, next day, Caponsacchi heard from Conti that the husband had seen that gaze. He would not signify, but there was Pompilia:
"Spare her, because he beats her as it is,
She's breaking her heart quite fast enough."
It was the turning-point in Caponsacchi's life. He had no thought of pursuing her; wholly the contrary was his impulse—he felt that he must leave Arezzo. All that hitherto had charmed him there was done with—the social successes, the intrigue, song-making; and his patron was already displeased. These things were what he was there to do, and he was going to church instead! "Are you turning Molinist?" the patron asked. "I answered quick" (says Caponsacchi in his narrative)
"Sir, what if I turned Christian?"
—and at once announced his resolve to go to Rome as soon as Lent was over. One evening, before he went, he was sitting thinking how his life "had shaken under him"; and