The other voice—­a man’s—­talked most of the while.  I could not follow what it said, but by-and-by caught a single word, “Milano”; and again two words, “The mountains” and yet again, but after an interval, “The people are poor; they give nothing; from year’s end to year’s end”—­and the voice prolonged itself like an echo, repeating the words until, as they died away, they seemed to measure out the time.

“The more reason why you—­” began the Princess’s voice.  “There shall be spared one—­a little one—­for Our Lady.”

But here I felt myself drifting off once more.  I was as one afloat in a whirlpool, now carried near to a straw and anon swept away as I clutched at it.

The eddy brought me round again to the window that was no window, the rumble of wheels, the plodding of a horse’s hoofs.  Beyond the low arch—­or was it a pent?—­shone a star or two, and against their pale radiance a shadow loomed—­the shadow of the Princess, still seated, still patient, still with her hands in her lap.  The rumble of the wheels, the slow rocking of my bed beneath me, fitted themselves to the intermittent flash of the stars, and beat out a rhythm in my memory—­a rhythm, and by degrees the words to fit it—­

     “Tanto ch’io vidi delle cose belle
      Che porta il ciel, per un pertugio tondo,
      E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.”

A riveder le stelle—­I closed my eyes, opened them again, and lo! the stars were gone.  In their place shone pale dawn, touching the grey-white arch of a tilt-waggon, on the floor of which I lay in a deep litter of straw.  But still by the tilt, between me and the dawn, rested my love, and drowsed, still patient, her hands in her lap.

“At last!  At last!”

She called to the driver—­I could not see him, for I lay with my face to the tilt—­and he pulled up his horse with a jolt.  Belike he had been slumbering, and with the same jolt awoke himself.  I tried to lift a hand—­I think to brush away the illusion of the window and its painted panes.

Maybe, slight as it was, she mistook the movement to mean that I felt stifled under the hood of the waggon and wanted air.  At any rate, she called again, and the driver (I have clean forgotten his face), left his reins and came around to her.  Between them they lifted me out and laid me on a bank between the road and a water-course that ran beside it.  I heard the water rippling, near by, and presently felt the cool, delicious touch of it as she dipped up a little in her hollowed palms and moistened my bandages.

Our waggon had come to a halt in the very centre (as it seemed) of a great plain, criss-crossed with dykes and lines of trees, and dotted with distant hamlets.  The hamlets twinkled in the fresh daylight, and in the nearest one—­a mile back on the road—­a fine campanile stood up against the sun, which pierced through three windows in its topmost story.  So flat was the plain that mere sky filled nine-tenths of the prospect; and all the wide dome of it tinkled with the singing of larks.