The canonico in the anteroom bowed austerely to him as he passed through; the old woman refused with a harsh “Nothing!” the money he offered her at the door.
He bitterly upbraided himself for the doubts he could not banish, and he still flushed with shame that he should have declared his knowledge of a scene which ought, at its worst, to have been inviolable by his speech. He scarcely cared now for the woman about whom these miseries grouped themselves; he realized that a fantastic remorse may be stronger than a jealous love.
He longed for the morrow to come, that he might confess his shame and regret; but a reaction to this violent repentance came before the night fell. As the sound of the priest’s voice and the sight of his wasted face faded from the painter’s sense, he began to see everything in the old light again. Then what Don Ippolito had said took a character of ludicrous, of insolent improbability.
After dark, Ferris set out upon one of his long, rambling walks. He walked hard and fast, to try if he might not still, by mere fatigue of body, the anguish that filled his soul. But whichever way he went he came again and again to the house of Don Ippolito, and at last he stopped there, leaning against the parapet of the quay, and staring at the house, as though he would spell from the senseless stones the truth of the secret they sheltered. Far up in the chamber, where he knew that the priest lay, the windows were dimly lit.
As he stood thus, with his upturned face haggard in the moonlight, the soldier commanding the Austrian patrol which passed that way halted his squad, and seemed about to ask him what he wanted there.
Ferris turned and walked swiftly homeward; but he did not even lie down. His misery took the shape of an intent that would not suffer him to rest. He meant to go to Don Ippolito and tell him that his story had failed of its effect, that he was not to be fooled so easily, and, without demanding anything further, to leave him in his lie.
At the earliest hour when he might hope to be admitted, he went, and rang the bell furiously. The door opened, and he confronted the priest’s servant. “I want to see Don Ippolito,” said Ferris abruptly.
“It cannot be,” she began.
“I tell you I must,” cried Ferris, raising his voice. “I tell you.”....
“Madman!” fiercely whispered the old woman, shaking both her open hands in his face, “he’s dead! He died last night!”