"Must this thing be?" he asked her.
There was such deep wistfulness in those words of his that she bent her head and would not look into his face.
"Francesco," she said, "I pray you, plead no further with my heart. I shall turn nun,—there is the truth."
"As you will—" he said, and a cord seemed to snap in his heart. "It is not for me to parley with your soul, not for me to revive a past that had best never been!"
Ilaria's gaze seemed far away. Her eyes, under their dark lashes, seemed like spring violets hiding in shadows.
There was an infinite pride, an infinite tenderness in the wistful face, as she turned to Francesco.
"Ah," she said with a sudden kindling, "why has it been decreed thus? I think my whole soul was made for beauty, my whole desire born for fair and lovely things. You will smile at me for a dreamer,—dreaming still, after the devastating storms of life have spent themselves over my head,—but often my thoughts seem to fly through forests, marvellous green glooms all drowned in moonlight. I love to hear the wind, to watch the great oaks battling, to see the sea, one laugh of gold. Now, every sunset harrows me into a moan of woe. Yet I can still sing to the stars at night, songs such as the woods weave from the voice of a gentle wind, dew-laden, green and lovely. Sometimes I feel faint for sheer love of this fair earth."
Francesco's eyes were on her with a strange, deep look. Every fibre of his being, every hidden instinct cried out in him to fold her in his arms, to hold her there forevermore, safe from the world, from harm. But, as if she had divined his thoughts, she drew away from him.
He stood motionless, with head thrown back, his eyes gazing upon the darkening windows of the east. The sound of the running waters surged in his ears; the colors and odors of the place seemed to faint into the night. As for Ilaria, she stared immovable into space.