Lex non poena mors.

Vivaldi’s friends in Milan came generously to Fulvia’s aid, and she would gladly have remained among them; but after the loss of her small inheritance and of her father’s manuscript she was without means of repaying their kindness, and nothing remained but to turn to her own kin.

As Odo sat in the quiet cell, listening to her story, and hearing again the great names his youth had reverenced, he felt himself an exile returning to his own, mounting the familiar heights and breathing the air that was his birthright.  Looking back from this recovered standpoint he saw how far behind his early hopes had been left.  Since his departure from Naples there had been nothing to remind him of that vast noiseless labour of the spirit going on everywhere beneath the social surface:  that baffled but undiscouraged endeavour in which he had once so impatiently claimed his share.  Now every word of Fulvia’s smote the bones of some dead purpose, till his bosom seemed a very valley of Ezekiel.  Her own trials had fanned her love of freedom, and the near hope of release lent an exaltation to her words.  Of bitterness, of resentment she gave no sign; and he was awed by the same serenity of spirit which had struck him in the imprisoned doctor.  But perhaps the strongest impression she produced was that of increasing his points of contact with life.  His other sentimental ties had been a barrier between himself and the outer world; but the feeling which drew him to Fulvia had the effect of levelling the bounds of egoism, of letting into the circle of his nearest emotions that great tide of human longing and effort that had always faintly sounded on the shores of self.  Perhaps it was her power of evoking this wider life that gave a sense of permanence, of security almost, to the stolen moments of their intercourse, lulling the lover’s impatience of actual conditions with the sense of something that must survive the accidents of fortune.  Only in some such way could he explain, in looking back, the completeness of each moment spent with her.  He was conscious even at the time of a suspension of the emotional laws, a charmed surrender to the limitations of his fate.  When he was away his impatience reasserted itself; but her presence was like a soothing hand on his spirit, and he knew that his quiet hours with her would count among those intervals between the crises of life that flower in memory when the crises themselves have faded.

It was natural that in the course of these visits she in turn should question him; and as his past rearranged itself beneath her scrutiny he seemed once more to trace the thread of purpose on which its fragments hung.  He told her of his connection with the liberals of Pianura, of the situation at court, and of the reason for his prolonged travels.  As he talked her eyes conveyed the exquisite sense of her complete comprehension.  She saw, before he could justify himself, how the uncertainty of his future, and his