"Ah, you will defend him against reason even," she complained. "His anger
exists. His thirst to kill--to stamp himself with the brand of Cain--
exists. He confesses that himself. His insubordination to me you have
seen for yourself; and that again is sin, for it is ordained that we shall
honour our parents.

"0!" she moaned. "My authority is all gone. He is beyond my control. He
has shaken off the reins by which I sought to guide him."

"You had done well to have taken my advice a year ago, Madonna. Even now
it is not too late. Let him go to Pavia, to the Sapienza, to study his
humanities."

"Out into the world!" she cried in horror. "0, no, no! I have sheltered
him here so carefully!"

"Yet you cannot shelter him for ever," said he. "He must go out into the
world some day."

"He need not," she faltered. "If the call were strong enough within him, a
convent..." She left her sentence unfinished, and looked at me.

"Go, Agostino," she bade me. "Fra Gervasio and I must talk."

I went reluctantly, since in the matter of their talk none could have had a
greater interest than I, seeing that my fate stood in the balance of it.
But I went, none the less, and her last words to me as I was departing were
an injunction that I should spend the time until I should take up my
studies for the day with Fra Gervasio in seeking forgiveness for the