“It goes on Sunday evening from Messina.”
Donna Micaela rose and walked away towards the terrace stairs.
“My father is to go to Catania on Saturday,” she said. “I shall ask Don Ferrante to be allowed to go with him.” She went down a few steps, as if she did not mean to say anything more. Then she stopped. “If you meet me in Catania, I will go with you whither you will.”
She hurried down the steps. Gaetano did not try to detain her. A time would come when she would not run away from him. He knew that she could not help loving him.
Donna Micaela passed the whole of Friday afternoon in the Cathedral. She had come to the Madonna and thrown herself down before her in despair. “Oh, Madonna mia, Madonna mia! Shall I be to-morrow a fugitive wife? Will the world have the right to say all possible evil of me?” Everything seemed equally terrible to her. She was appalled at the thought of fleeing with Gaetano, and she did not know how she could stay with Don Ferrante. She hated the one as much as the other. Neither of them seemed able to offer her anything but unhappiness.
She saw that the Madonna would not help. And now she asked herself if it really would not be a greater misery to go with Gaetano than to remain with Don Ferrante. Was it worth while to ruin herself to be revenged on her husband?
She suffered great anguish. She had been driven on by a devouring restlessness the whole week. Worst of all, she could not sleep. She no longer thought clearly or soundly.
Time and time again she returned to her prayers. But then she thought: “The Madonna cannot help me.” And so she stopped.
Then she came to think of the days of her former sorrows, and remembered the little image that once had helped her, when she had been in despair as great as this.
She turned with passionate eagerness to the poor little child. “Help me, help me! Help my old father, and help me myself that I may not be tempted to anger and revenge!”