The very word, as she repeated it to herself, rang like an awful, almost incomprehensible, accusation of evil in her ears.

One moment she stood at the top of the steps outside the church, looking down at the bare straggling trees below, and upward to the grey sky, against which the lofty eaves of the Palazzo Barberini stood out sharply defined.

The weather had changed again, and a soft southerly wind was blowing the spray of the fountain half across the piazza.

Corona paused, her graceful figure half leaning against the stone doorpost of the church, her hand upon the heavy leathern curtain in the act to lift it; and as she stood there, a desperate temptation assailed her.

It seemed desperate to her--to many another woman it would have appeared only the natural course to pursue--to turn her back upon the church, to put off the hard moment of confession, to go down again into the city, and to say to herself that there was no harm in seeing Don Giovanni, provided she never let him speak of love.