Her friend slept quietly, composedly, breathing like a child. She bent down and whispered close to her ear:
“Caterina, Caterina!”
She opened her eyes in alarm; a sign from Lucia froze the cry that rose to her lips. The surprise on her face spoke for her, and questioned her friend.
“If you love me, Caterina, dress and follow me.”
“Where are we going?” the other ventured to ask, hesitating.
“If you love me....”
Caterina no longer questioned her. She dressed herself in silence, looking now and then at Lucia, who stood there like a statue, waiting. When Caterina was ready she took her by the hand to lead her.
“Fear nothing,” breathed Lucia, who could feel the coldness of her hand. They glided down the passage that divided the beds from the rest of the room. Artemisia Minichini was the only one who turned in her bed, and appeared for a moment to have opened her eyes. They closed again, but perhaps she saw through her lids. No other sign of waking. They shrank closer together when they passed the last bed, Friscia’s, and stooped to make themselves smaller. That moment seemed to them like a century. When they got into the corridor, Caterina squeezed Lucia’s hand as if they had passed through a great danger.
“Come, come, come!” murmured the siren voice of Lucia, and suddenly they stopped before a door. Lucia dropped Caterina’s hand and inserted a key into the keyhole; the door creaked as it flew open. A gust of chill air struck the two young girls; a faint diffuse light broke in upon them. A lamp was burning before the image of the Virgin. They were in the chapel. Calmly Lucia knelt before the altar and lighted two candelabra. Then she turned to Caterina, who, dazed by the light, was catching her breath, and once more said, “Come.”
They advanced towards the altar. In the little whitewashed church, with two high windows open on the country, a pleasant dampness tempered the heat of the August night. The faintest perfume of incense still clung to the air. The church was so placid and restful, the candelabra in their places, the tapers extinguished, the Sacrament shut away in its pix, the altar-cloth turned up to cover it. But a quaintly fashioned silver arabesque, behind which Lucia had lighted a taper, projected on the wall the profile of a strange monstrous beast. Caterina stood there in a dream, with her hand still clasped in Lucia’s, whose fever it had caught.... Even at that unusual hour, in the dead of night, she no longer asked herself what strange rite was to be solemnised in that chapel illuminated only for them. She was conscious of a vague tremor, of a weight in the head, and a longing for sleep; she would fain have been back in the dormitory, with her cheek on her pillow.... But like one who dreams of having the well-defined will to do a thing, and yet while the dream lasts has neither the speech to express nor the energy to accomplish it, she was conscious, between sleeping and waking, of the torpor of her own mind. She looked around her as one in a stupor, neither understanding nor caring to understand. From time to time her mouth twitched with an imperceptible yawn. Lucia’s hands were crossed over her bosom, and her eyes fixed on the Madonna. No sound escaped her half-open lips. Caterina leant forward to observe her; in the vague turn of thought that went round and round in her sleepy brain, she asked herself if she were dreaming, and Lucia a phantom.... She passed one hand across her brow either to awake herself or to dispel the hallucination.