'I went out and leaned over the loggia. The room opening into the vestibule is dark, but there is light in the room next to it, where Manuel and the Marchese are still playing cards.
'The gavotte has stopped, some one is going down the steps into the garden.
'Why should I be so alert, so watchful, so curious? Why should every sound startle me to-night?
'Delfina has wakened and is calling me.
'September 17th.—Manuel left this morning. We accompanied him to the station at Rovigliano. He will return about the 10th of October to fetch me, and we all go on to Sienna, to my mother. Delfina and I will probably stay at Sienna till after the New Year. I shall see the Loggia of the Pope and the Fonte Gaja, and my beautiful black and white Cathedral once more—that beloved dwelling-place of the Blessed Virgin, where a part of my soul has ever remained to pray in a spot that my knees know well.
'I always have a vision of that spot clearly before me, and when I go back I shall kneel on the exact stone where I always used to. I know it as well as if my knees had left a deep hollow there. And there too I shall find that portion of my soul which still lingers there in prayer beneath the starry blue vault above, which is mirrored in the marble floor like a midnight sky in a placid lake.
'Assuredly nothing there is changed. In the costly chapel, full of palpitating shadow and mysterious gloom, alive with the glint of precious marble, the lamps burned softly, all their light seemingly gathered into the little globe of oil that fed the flame as into some limpid topaz. Little by little, under my intent gaze, the sculptured stone grew less coldly white, took on warm ivory tints, became gradually penetrated by the pallid life of the celestial beings, and over the marble forms crept the faint transparency of angelic flesh.
'Ah, how fervent and spontaneous were my prayers then! When I absorbed myself in meditation, I seemed to be walking through the secret paths of my soul as in a garden of delight, where nightingales sang in the blossoming trees and turtle-doves cooed beside the running waters of Grace divine.
'September 18th.—A day of nameless torture. Something seems to be forcing me to gather up, to re-adjust, to join together the fragments of a dream, half of which is being confusedly realised outside of me, and the other half going on equally confusedly in my own heart. And try as I will, I cannot succeed in piecing it completely together.
'September 19th.—Continued torture. Long ago, some one sang to me but never finished the song. Now some one is taking up the strain at the point where it broke off, but meanwhile, I have forgotten the beginning. And my spirit loses itself in vain gropings after the old melody, nor can it find any pleasure in the new.