Benedetto, walking steadily on, answered in the same submissive tone as
before: "Are the foreign ladies I saw going to remain?"

Don Clemente pressed his arm very hard.

"I do not know," he said, adding, much moved, and with another pressure
of the arm: "If I had only known--!"

Benedetto opened his lips to speak, but checked himself. They proceeded
thus in silence towards the two black cliffs in the noisy ravine, and
leaving the main road, which turns to cross the Anio by the Ponte di San
Mauro, took the mule-path leading to the convents, which winds up to
the cliff on the left. The enormous, slanting mass of rock before them
seemed to Don Clemente at that moment the symbol of a demoniacal power
standing in Benedetto's way; so, too, the gathering darkness seemed to
him symbolically threatening, and threatening also the ever-increasing,
ever-deepening roar of the lonely river.

Beyond the oratory of San Mauro, where the mule-path to the convents
turns to the left, running along the side of the hill towards the
Madonnina dell' Oro, and another mule-path leads straight into the
ravine, past the ruins of the Baths of Nero, Benedetto disengaged
himself gently from the monk's arm, and stopped.

"Listen, Padre," said he; "I must speak with you; perhaps at some
length."

"Yes, my friend, but it is late; let us go into the monastery."