Each lay down on his strip of couch-matting; rose and ate, and passed the
dreadful untamed hours; nor would Wilfrid ask whether it was day or
night. We belong to time so utterly, that when we get no note of time,
it wears the shrouded head of death for us already. Rinaldo could quit
the place as he pleased; he knew the hours; and Wilfrid supposed that it
must be hatred that kept him from voluntarily divulging that blessed
piece of knowledge. He had to encourage a retorting spirit of hatred in
order to mask his intense craving. By an assiduous calculation of
seconds and minutes, he was enabled to judge that the lamp burned a space
of six hours before it required replenishing. Barto Rizzo's wife trimmed
it regularly, but the accursed woman came at all seasons. She brought
their meals irregularly, and she would never open her lips: she was like
a guardian of the tombs. Wilfrid abandoned his dream of the variation of
night and day, and with that the sense of life deadened, as the lamp did
toward the sixth hour. Thenceforward his existence fed on the movements
of his companion, the workings of whose mind he began to read with a
marvellous insight. He knew once, long in advance of the act or an
indication of it, that Rinaldo was bent on prayer. Rinaldo had slightly
closed his eyelids during the perusal of his book; he had taken a pencil
and traced lines on it from memory, and dotted points here and there; he
had left the room, and returned to resume his study. Then, after closing
the book softly, he had taken up the mark he was accustomed to place in
the last page of his reading, and tossed it away. Wilfrid was prepared
to clap hands when he should see the hated fellow drop on his knees; but
when that sight verified his calculation, he huddled himself exultingly
in his couch-cloth:--it was like a confirming clamour to him that he was
yet wholly alive. He watched the anguish of the prayer, and was rewarded
for the strain of his faculties by sleep. Barto Rizzo's rough voice
awakened him. Barto had evidently just communicated dismal tidings to
Rinaldo, who left the vault with him, and was absent long enough to make