He again remembered the night he first saw her, how the exquisite purity of her face distinguished her from the glittering throng among which she moved. He even remembered now in what graceful folds her white robe fell from the square cut neck to her feet, how the over-sleeves hung open from the shoulders, revealing the snowy whiteness of her arms.
He remembered how that night he had refused to go singing carnival songs with the youths of the court; how they, heated with wine, had jeered and taunted him, asking if, perchance, he was turning into a pious monk.
Suddenly in his waking dream he found himself at Monte Cassino in the cell of the Prior. And the Prior talked and talked about the sins of the world, and the lust of the flesh, and of prayers and penances. How, as he sat there in grim silence, the Prior thought he was listening, instead of thinking of a smile of divine sweetness, and a fairer face than that of the Virgin looking out at him from the mural painting of Masaccio. And how the Prior would have crossed himself and implored protection from the snares of Satan, had he known that Francesco's thoughts were of a woman. How, when he went to his own cell that night, when he lay down on the bare hard boards, that served for bed and pillow, a swift revulsion of feeling had come over him.
At that moment Francesco felt that, wherever he went, he would bear his shadow with him none the less surely, because its presence might be hidden by the general negative of that sunlight, which so inexorably illumined every detail of the road that lay before him.
The shadow!
Was he indeed a living soul created in the image of his Maker, or an echo merely shouted by some fiend in derision, destined to wander forever disconsolate among the waste places, seeking and finding not?—
Now he saw Ilaria come up the moonlit path.
For a moment he wavered, trembling in every limb. Then the memory of their meeting at the fountain swept over him in a mighty wave. He called to mind the sweet smile of long ago, the touch of her hands.
No longer master of his feelings, he took a step forward, his eyes, straining into the night, riveted upon her. There was a hint of melancholy in the curve about the mouth and the farseeing eyes.
Another moment and he found himself face to face with Ilaria Caselli.