In this case the link had been forged long ago. Don Agostino remembered the forging of it every time he donned the sacred vestments to say mass, and was conscious that the years had riveted it only more firmly.
It was, perhaps, as well that his housekeeper was busy plucking a chicken in the back premises; and it was certainly as well that none of his flock could have observed their pastor's actions when he had shut himself into his study, otherwise unprofitable surmises, long rejected as such, would have cropped up again round the measures of wine in the Caffè Garibaldi that evening.
For some time Don Agostino sat in front of his writing-table thinking, his face buried in his hands. The joyous chattering of the house-martins flying to and from their nests came through the open windows, and the scent of roses and Madonna lilies. But presently the liquid notes of the swallows changed into the soft lapping of waters rising and falling on marble steps; the scent of the lilies was there, but mingling with it was the salt smell of the lagoons, the warm, silky air blowing in from the Adriatic. The distant sounds from the village street became, in Don Agostino's ears, the cries of the gondoliers and the fishermen, and Venice rose before his eyes—Venice, with the rosy light of a summer evening falling on her palaces and her churches, turning her laughing waters into liquid flame; Venice, with her murmur of music in the air as the gondolas and the fishing-boats glided away from the city across the lagoons to the Lido and the sea; Venice, holding out to him youth and love, and the first sweet dawning of the passion that only youth and love can know.
Suddenly Don Agostino raised his head and looked about him as one looks who wakes from a dream. His eyes fell upon the crucifix standing on his table and on the ivory Christ nailed to it. And then his dream passed.
Rising, he crossed the room, and, unlocking a cabinet, took from it a tiny miniature and one letter—the only one left to him, for he had burned the rest. The keeping of this letter had been a compromise. For do not the best of us make a compromise with our consciences occasionally?
The face in the miniature was that of a young girl—a child almost—but exceedingly beautiful, with the red-gold hair and creamy coloring of the Venetian woman of the Renaissance.
Don Agostino looked at it long; afterwards, almost mechanically, he raised the picture towards his lips. Then, with a sudden gesture, as though realizing what he was about to do, he thrust it back into the drawer of the cabinet. But he kissed the letter before he replaced it beside the miniature.
It was merely another compromise, this time not so much with his conscience, perhaps, as with his priesthood.
"Bianca!" he said, aloud, and his voice dwelt on the name with a lingering tenderness. "Bianca! And she—that other woman—she brings your child here—here, where I am! Well, perhaps it is you who send her—who knows? Perhaps it was you who sent me to Montefiano—you, or the blessed Mother of us all—again, who knows? It was strange, was it not, that of all places they should send me here, where your child was born, the child that should have been—"
The door was flung open hastily, and Don Agostino's housekeeper filled the threshold.