Sassetto--in after-excuse for her behaviour to him. 'For you and me--_bien
entendu!_--we think what we please. Heaven knows I am not bigoted. Teresa
makes herself unhappy about me.' The stout, imperious woman stifled a
sigh that betrayed much. 'I take what I want from our religion--and I
don't trouble about the rest. Emilio was the same. But a priest that
disobeys--that deserts--! No! that is another matter. I can't argue; it
seizes me by the throat.' She made an expressive movement. 'It is an
instinct--an inheritance--call it what you like. But I feel like Teresa; I
could run at the sight of him.'

Certainly Father Benecke gave her no occasion to run. Since his recovery
from the first shock and agitation of his suspension he had moved about the
roads and tracks of Torre Amiata with the 'recollected' dignity of the pale
and meditative recluse. He asked nothing; he spoke to no one, except to
the ladies at the convent, and to the old woman who served him unwillingly
in the little tumble-down house by the river's edge to which he had now
transferred himself and his books, for greater solitude. Eleanor understood
that he shrank from facing his German life and friends again till he had
completed the revision of his book, and the evolution of his thought; and
she had some reason to believe that he regarded his isolation and the
enmity of this Italian neighbourhood as a necessary trial and testing, to
be borne without a murmur.

As his step came nearer, she sat up and threw off her languor. It might
have been divined, even, that she heard it with a secret excitement.

When he appeared he greeted her with the manner at once reticent and
cordial that was natural to him. He had brought her an article in a German
newspaper of the 'Centre' on himself and his case, the violence of which
had provoked him to a reply, whereof the manuscript was also in his pocket.