All this flashed through his mind as he read, and pressed to his lips the handkerchief which she had dropped down to him, though it was not a relic. He lifted his arms upward toward her window with a rapturous joy, as if to embrace her, but she did not look out again. A little scruple for having deprived the Madonna for a moment of her lamp had made her resolve to say at once a decade of the rosary in expiation. He waited till the sound of closing doors and wandering voices told that the inhabitants gathered for the evening in the Lungara were separating to their homes, then went reluctantly away. Matteo would be at home, and Matteo's face might look down at him from that other window beside Silvia's. So he also went home, with the moonlight between his feet and the ground and stars sparkling in his brain. He felt as if his head were the sky.
This was an August night. One day in October, Matteo told his sister that she was to go to Rome with him the next morning to pass a month with a family they knew there, and afterward begin her noviciáte in the convent of the Sacramentarians at Monte Cavallo. He had received a letter from the Signora Fantini, who would receive her and do everything for her. He and Pepina had no time, now that the vintage had begun, to attend to such affairs, even if they knew how.
Silvia grew pale. She had not expected to go before the spring, and now all was arranged without a word being said to her, and she was to go without saying good-bye to any one.
Matteo's sharp eyes were watching her. "You will be ready to start at seven o'clock," he said: "I must be back to-morrow night."
"Yes, Matteo," she faltered, hesitated a moment, then ventured to add, "I did not expect to go so soon."
"And what of that?" he demanded roughly. "You were to go at the proper time, and the proper time is to-morrow."
She trembled, but ventured another word: "I should like to see my confessor first."
"He will come here this evening to see you," her brother replied: "I have already talked with him. You have nothing else to do. Pepina will pack your trunk while you are talking with the priest."
Silvia had no more to say. She was bound hand and foot. Besides, she was willing to go, she assured herself. It was her duty to obey her parents, or the ones who stood in their place and had authority over her. Matteo said she must go; therefore it was her duty to go, and she was willing.
But the willing girl looked very pale and walked about with a very feeble step, and it was hard work to keep the tears that were every moment rising to her eyes from falling over her cheeks. It was such a pitiful face, indeed, that Father Teodoli, when he came just before Ave Maria, asked if Silvia were ill.