How can I write what yet remains to be written?

Our child was never born.  So often, hand in hand, we had climbed to the pine-woods that it escaped my notice how she, who had used to be my support, came by degrees to lean on my arm.  I saw her broken by fasting and vigil, and for me, I winced at the sound of her cough.  The blood on her handkerchief accused me.  “But we must wait until the child is born,” I promised myself, “and the mountain air will quickly cure her.”  Fool! the good farm-people knew better.  While I gained strength, day by day she was wasting.  “Only let us cross the mountains,” I prayed, “and at home all my life shall pay for her love!” Fool, again!  She would never cross the mountains, now.

There came a day when I climbed the pine-wood alone.  With my new strength, and because her weight was not on my arm, I climbed higher than usual; and then the noise of chopping drew me on to the upper edge of the forest, where I found Brother Polifilo with his sleeves rolled, hacking at a tree.  He dropped his axe and stared at me, as at a ghost.  I could not guess what perturbed him; for he had called at the farm but the day before and heard me boast of my new strength.

I sat down to watch him.  But after a stroke or two his arm appeared to fail him, and he desisted.  Without a word, almost without looking at me, he laid the axe over his shoulder and went up the path towards his chapel.

I gazed after him, wondering.  Then, of a sudden, I understood.

Three days later she died.  To the end they could not persuade me it was possible; nay at the very end, while she lay panting against my arm, I could not believe.

She died quietly—­so quietly.  A little before the end she had been restless, lying with a pucker on her brow, and eyes that asked pitiably for something—­I could not guess what, until she turned them to the chair, over the back of which (for the day was sultry), I had tossed my coat.

I reached for the coat and slipped it on.  Her eyes grew glad at once.

“Closer!” she whispered.  As I bent closer, she nestled her face against it. “La macchia! . . . la macchia!”

With that last breath, drawing in the scent of it, she laid her head slowly back, and slept.

The Bavarelli took it for granted that I would bury her in the graveyard, down the valley.  But I consulted with Brother Polifilo.  I argued that every high mountain-top by its very nature came within the definition of consecrated ground; and after a show of reluctance he accepted the heresy, on condition I allowed him first to visit the spot chosen and recite the prayer of consecration over it.

We laid her in the coffin that Brother Polifilo brought, and carried her to the summit of the mountain overlooking the pass, where the rock had allowed us to dig the shallowest of graves.  Beside it, when the coffin was covered, I said good-bye to the Bavarelli and dismissed them down the hill.  They understood that I had yet a word to speak to the good monk.