She breathed hard, and her face was very pale.
"I too might have found forgetfulness where others find. That path was not for me. Francesco!" She laid her hand upon his own. "Look in my eyes and see!"
That night they stopped at a wayside inn, as brother and sister, Francesco keeping watch outside, while Ilaria occupied the only guest-chamber of the tavern.
Francesco's eyes stayed with her darkly, sadly, after she had gone inside. His tragic face seemed to look out of the night like the face of one dead.
He had tethered their horses some distance away, so that the occasional tramp of their hoofs should fall muffled on the air. The deeply caverned eyes watching through the night seemed dark with a quiet destiny. The thin, pale face, white in its meditative repose, seemed fit to front the ruins of a stricken land.
It was the face of a man who had watched and striven, who had followed what he held to be truth, like a shadow; who had found the light of life in a woman's eyes, and saw that light slowly go out and vanish in outer darkness.
There was bitterness there, pain, and the ghost of a sad desire that was pleading with death. The face would have seemed stern, but for a certain something that made its shadows kind.
The woods about him seemed to swim in a mist of silver.
Thus he sat through the night. He saw the moon go down in the west. Nothing earthly could come into the sad session of remembrances, the vigil of a dead past.—
The early dawn found them again upon the road.