I have not a heart of stone:  I confess that her distress made me dreadfully ashamed.  This good soul, whose only happiness lay in mine, who had trusted her all in all to me without flinching, whose life was now at my disposal as her honour had been for so long.  Unworthy of the name of man had I been if I could wound her so lightly.  I put my arm round her waist and drew her towards me with tenderness.  I took her hands from her face and implored her forgiveness.  I promised to offend her no more, to stay in the cloister until she came, to sleep in the Sagrestia, to do all her behests.  In answer, the sun came out in her face.  She listened to me with soft rapture, beautiful to see, and before I had done, the dear, generous creature snatched at my hand, and, kneeling, kissed it with a frenzy of devotion which brought the tears to my eyes.  Immediately afterwards she was gone on her errand of mercy, leaving me in a glow of truly honest gratitude, which was to have its speedy fruit in an act which, though it fell short of my intention, was to prove for my ultimate content.

CHAPTER XXIX

I TAKE SANCTUARY

Past fatigues and present danger did not disturb my happy meditations.  I paced the cloister of San Lorenzo without regard for them, absorbed in considering my future conduct, and the relationship in which I stood to my little world of circumstance.  It was necessary that I should make plans for myself and for Virginia, and I made and rejected many without modifying them one and all, as well I might have done, by allowing for the part which the gallows, the gaol or the hulks might play in them.  As my habit has always been, I endeavoured to judge the case upon its merits, and to adjust myself to it, not so much according to my desires as to my duties towards it.  Here—­to remind the reader—­are the three factors of my problem.

1.  I had, of my own act, withdrawn myself from Aurelia’s society, having done her all the reparation I could, and obtained her forgiveness.

2.  I had constituted myself Virginia’s champion against the Marchese Semifonte.

3.  I had killed Fra Palamone.

Now, to take these in order, it was plainly my duty to quit the side of the fair Aurelia.  Even though she were and were to remain for me the shining orb of my firmament, in whose beam I must for ever walk—­I must not see her again.  I had obtained from her all that I could hope for, and given her quite as much as, if not more than, she desired.  To stay by her now would be to compromise her; I could not be blind to the conviction of all my acquaintance, which saw in me that horrible spectacle, the lover of a married woman, accepted as such by her lawful master.  Robbery! of which I could never be capable.  No more of Aurelia, then, no more.  She must depart like a dream before the stern face of the morrow—­or I must depart.  Happy, perhaps, for her, whatever it may have been for me, that she herself had taken the first step when she turned her back upon me in pique.