". . . And there
Faced me Count Guido."
Oh, if he had killed him then! if he had taken the throat in "one great good satisfying gripe," and abolished Guido with his lie! . . . But while he mused on the irony of such a miscreant calling her his wife,
"The minute, oh the misery, was gone;"
—two police-officers stood beside, and Guido was ordering them to take her.
Caponsacchi insisted that he should lead them to the room where she was sleeping. He was a priest and privileged; when they came there, if the officer should detect
"Guilt on her face when it meets mine, then judge
Between us and the mad dog howling there!"
They all went up together. There she lay,
"O' the couch, still breathless, motionless, sleep's self,
Wax-white, seraphic, saturate with the sun
That filled the window with a light like blood."
At Guido's loud order to the officers, she started up, and stood erect, face to face with the husband: "the opprobrious blur against all peace and joy and light and life"—for he was standing against the window a-flame with morning. But in her terror, that seemed to her the flame from hell, since he was in it—and she cried to him to stand away, she chose hell rather than "embracing any more."