Everybody knelt except Roma. She alone was standing, but her heart was

on its knees and her whole soul was prostrate.

The priest put a crucifix in the Countess's hand and she kissed it

fervently, pronouncing all the time with gasping breath the name, "Gesù,

Gesù, Gesù!"

The passing bell of the parish church was tolling in slow strokes, and

the priest was praying fast and loud:

"May Christ who called thee receive thee, and let angels lead thee into

the bosom of Abraham."

At one moment the crucifix dropped from the dying woman's hands, and her

diamond rings, now too large for the shrivelled fingers, fell on to the

counterpane. A little later her wig fell off, and for an instant her

head was bald. Her forehead was perspiring; her breath was rattling in

her chest. At last she became delirious.

"It's a lie!" she cried. "Everything I've said is a lie! I didn't kill

it!" Then she rolled aside, and the crucifix fell on to the floor.

The priest, who had been praying faster and faster every moment, rose to

his feet and said in an altered tone, "We commend to Thee, O Lord, the

soul of Thy handmaiden, Elizabeth, that being dead to the world she may

live to Thee, and those sins which through the frailty of human life

she has committed Thou by the indulgence of Thy loving kindness may wipe

out, through Christ our Lord, Amen."

The priest's voice died down to an inarticulate murmur and then stopped.

A moment afterwards the curtains were drawn back, the shutters parted,

and the windows thrown open. A flood of sunset light streamed into the

room. The candles burnt yellow and went out. The mystic rites were at an

end.

Roma fled back to her own room. Her storm-tossed soul was foundering.

The band was still playing on the Pincio, and the sun was going down

behind St. Peter's, when Roma took up her pen to write.

"She is dead! The life she clung to so desperately has left her at last.

How she held on to it! And now she has gone to give an account of the

deeds done in this body. Yet who am I to talk like this? Only a poor,

unhappy fellow-sinner.

"After confession she thought she was forgiven. She imagined she was

pure, sinless, soulful. Perhaps she was so, and only the pains of death

made her seem to fall away. But what a power in confession! Oh, the joy

in her poor face when she had lifted the burden of her sins and secrets

off her soul! Forgiveness! What a thing it must be to feel one's self

forgiven!...




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