Then, all at once, she scarcely knew how, Veronica was standing upon a little balcony.  Behind her, the walls of the embrasure were fully fifteen feet thick.  Before her, under the glow of the sunset on the one hand, and the first pale moonlight on the other, lay a great valley, deep and long and broadening fan-like from below her to the far distance, where the evening mists were beginning to gather the white light of the moon, while the great mountains of the southeast were still red with the last blood of the dying day—­a view of matchless peace and surpassing beauty, such as she had never yet seen.  Just then, she looked down, and there, at her feet, were the brown roofs of Muro.  Her dream seemed to be suddenly realized, and she had found the room of which she had so often made the picture in her imagination.  But it was far more beautiful than she had dared to imagine or dream.  The lofty fortress was built lengthwise along the rock, facing the southwest, to meet the winter sun from morning till night; and forever before it lay the wide Basilicata, the peace of the valley, the height of the huge mountains, the infinite tenderness of a distance that is seen from a vast height—­in which even what would be near in one plane, is already far by depth.

Veronica looked out in silence for a long time, and the day faded at last in the sky, while the moon’s light whitened and strewed blackness across the twilight shadows.  The old priest stood beside her, his three-cornered hat in his hand.  But the silver spectacles had disappeared.  He could feel what was before him without seeing it distinctly.

“I knew that I should find it,” said Veronica, at last.  “I always knew that it was here.  I shall live in this room.”

“It is a good room,” said Don Teodoro, quietly, and not at all understanding what she meant.

“And I have an idea that I shall die in this room,” added the young girl, in a dreamy tone, not caring whether he heard or not.  “I am the last of them, you know.  They all came from here in the beginning, ever so long ago.  It would be natural that the last of them should die here.”

“For Heaven’s sake, let us not talk of such sad things!” cried the priest, protesting against the mere mention of death, as almost every Italian will.

“Have they made it a sitting-room?” asked Veronica, turning from the balcony into the deep embrasure.

She had scarcely glanced at the furniture, for she had made straight for the window on entering.  She looked about her now.  There were dark tapestries on the walls.  There was a big polished table in the middle, and a dozen or more carved chairs, covered with faded brocade, were arranged in regular order on the three sides away from the windows.  The high vault was roughly painted in fresco, with cherubs and garlands of flowers in the barbarous manner of Italian art fifty years ago.  There was a low marble mantelpiece, and on it stood six brass candlesticks at precisely even distances, one from another, the six candles being all lighted.  But there was a lamp on the table.  Veronica smiled.