“Me miserable!” I cried.
“I had believed you one who erred through excess of holiness.”
“Whereas I am one who attempted holiness through excess of error.”
“I had believed you so, so...O Agostino!” It was a little wail of pain.
“Set me a penance,” I implored her.
“What penance can I set you? Will any penance restore to me my shattered faith?”
I groaned miserably and covered my face with my hands. It seemed that I was indeed come to the end of all my hopes; that the world was become as much a mockery to me as had been the hermitage; that the one was to end for me upon the discovery of a fraud, as had the other ended—with the difference that in this case the fraud was in myself.
It seemed, indeed, that our first communion must be our last. Ever since she had seen me step into that gold-and-purple dining-room at Pagliano, the incarnation of her vision, as she was the incarnation of mine, Bianca must have waited confidently for this hour, knowing that it was foreordained to come. Bitterness and disillusion were all that it had brought her.
And then, ere more could be said, a thin, flute-like voice hissed down the vaulted gallery:
“Madonna Bianca! To hide your beauty from our hungry eyes. To quench the light by which we guide our footsteps. To banish from us the happiness and joy of your presence! Unkind, unkind!”