Then Carlino fired up, caught, her wrists, and shook her so that he really hurt her.

She must absolutely go! Now that she tried to resist, the moment had come to tell her that he was acquainted with the reasons of her windings and twistings, of her mysteries, her red eyes, her bad reading, and also of her not wishing to leave Rome.

He had been informed of these things by anonymous letters.

Woe to her if she did not break with that madman! Woe to her if she sacrificed her convictions to him, if she allowed herself to be won over to superstition, to bigotry, to the religion of the priests! He would never look on her face again.

He would disown her as a sister, he who wished to live and die a free-thinker.