But when he had left her, irresolution swept over him. First, the Church seemed to rebuke—the Church who had smiled on his silly intrigues! Now she changed her tone, it appeared:—
"Now, when I found out first that life and death
Are means to an end, that passion uses both,
Indisputably mistress of the man
Whose form of worship is self-sacrifice."
But that soon passed: the word was God's; this was the true self-sacrifice. . . . But might it not injure her—scandal would hiss about her name. Would not God choose His own way to save her? And he might pray. . . . Two days passed thus. But he must go to counsel and to comfort her—was he not a priest? He went. She was there, leaning over the terrace; she reproached him: why did he delay the help his heart yearned to give? He answered with his fears for her, but she broke in, never doubting him though he should doubt himself:
"'I know you: when is it that you will come?'"
"To-morrow at the day's dawn," he replied; and all was arranged—the place, the time; she came, she did not speak, but glided into the carriage, while he cried to the driver:
". . . 'By San Spirito,
To Rome, as if the road burned underneath!'"
When she was dying of Guido's twenty-two dagger-thrusts, this was how Pompilia thought of that long flight:
"I did pray, do pray, in the prayer shall die:
'Oh, to have Caponsacchi for my guide!'
Ever the face upturned to mine, the hand
Holding my hand across the world . . ."
And he, telling the judges of it at the murder-trial, cried that he never could lie quiet in his grave unless he "mirrored them plain the perfect soul Pompilia."